Artist:
International Observer
Title:
Pangolin
Label:
Dubmission Records
Released:
4th September 2020
International Observer’s productions have been featured on this blog from the early days of it’s conception, and he’s back once more with five fresh dubs inspired by recent events, his wife Lauren Drescher’s Zoonotic print series (the Pangolin is utilised for the cover art ) and our rapacious approach to the natural world.
https://www.ldrescher.com/zoonotic/
We begin the journey with ‘Chiff-Chaff Dub’ where I’d hazard a guess the bird song featured is a Chiff-Chaff and hence the name. The piece is a wonderful bass heavy plodding fusion of electro-dub and Indian instruments. While the brakes are applied to the vocoder vocal ‘Forty Days and Forty Nights Dub’ there is no compromise on the bass.
The title track ‘Pangolin Dub’ the Pangolin is the most poached and trafficked creature on earth, for use in Chinese medicine and whose meat is considered a delicacy for the wealthy in China and Vietnam. As sad and hopeless the plight of the Pangolin is, the track itself isn’t really melancholic just a stereo-typical piece of dub reggae with a touch of horn accompaniment and tribal percussion.
This is followed by ‘Sit You Down, Father, Rest You Dub’ which begins as a rather pleasant acoustic reggae number, then the bass drops hard and he flirts with harmonica and guitar in places. To see us out is ‘Smash the System Dub’ now whether this refers to the sound system, a political system or both is up to you to interpret. Either way, it’s another piece of bass heavy dub peppered with fx and loops that compliments it’s predecessors perfectly.
Reviewed by Woodzee
Links
No comments:
Post a Comment