Diverse Dub Warrior | Roots Factory presents a maverick talent this month with a visit from world renowned producer Mr Adrian Maxwell Sherwood
| Interview by Paul Tarpey
Reggae timbres have been a constant hum in Limerick in recent years with the vibe continuing from Cheebah’s seminal boat house gigs to the recent trojan work done by the soundmen of Strutt, Roots Factory and Dubble Bubble as well as the twisted dub of Code and the Jungle massive who deliver various strands of deep bass. The often adventurous booking of this collective culminates this month with selector Jc and Roots Facotry welcoming Mr Adrian Maxwell Sherwood.
For those unfamiliar with his ‘behind the scene-ness,’ this English sonic architect has done a good 30 years of dub sound bothering. He produced his own Reggae single while still in his teens, made jarring post punk tracks with The Fall and The Pop Group and managed to pursuade the Sugarhill Gang’s band to come live in England and become industrial noise creators. Wrapping up the 80’s he reestablished Lee Scratch Perry as a Reggae force with the album ‘Time boom.’
Then there’s the remix work for Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails and Primal Scream strung around the rootsy magic of tracks with Bim Sherman, Sly n’ Robbie and Prince Far-I . Explaining the sheer volume and quality of addictive noise he’s been involved in Sherwood says simply, “I just worked with people I thought were the best in their genre.” He has also been quoted as saying that “good Music defies categorisation.”
Throughout this varied song line, Sherwoods sonic morality unites disparate artists and keeps him hungrily chasing new sounds. He apologises for eating chips when I get him on the phone for a short chat giving me a chance to remind myself not to pull a Trainspotting cord and tie this whole thing up on the work he did in 1987 alone.
With energy in his voice he leads me precisely to the moment in 1977, as a 19 year old white kid in a studio, he was humming a bassline for his own record, ‘Dub from Creation,’ an awakening? “ I was 12 listening to my mate’s sister play Reggae and Calypso music ‘cause she had all this great music from Jamacia and England. Me and my Jamacian mate Gilbert would just stand outside the soul club in High Wickam and laugh at the walls shaking with the mental levels of sound. I was lucky to maintain this love of it all by being taken on by another Jamacian lad who got me Djing and that’s been it since.”
Amongst these influences Sherwood remembers an interesting link between the Irish and Jamaican music he experienced from a small record shop in Stamford Hill. “ It was called ‘R‘n’B’ after the owners Rita and Benny and people thought it stood for rhythm ‘n’ blues. They’d record Russian music off the radio and press it up. That little shop released the first Lonnie Donegan record, the first Jamaican record and the first Irish Record in England and the label said ‘Irish and Jamaican records together,’ because both communities were getting treated the same ( as immigrants) there was this link between them, they were drawn together because of their love of music, Irish and all this, on a label run by a Jewish couple!”
Selling and reissuing serious reggae albums led to the creation of his own label, On U Sound, which for years became the home of much dubby experimentation on the UK /JA axis, setting the template for much leftfield beats. The Label took a break in the 90’s but has now returned to distort another generation’s heads.
Many tales can be told concentrating specifically on just certain chapters of Sherwood’s career. There’s a whole book in his relationship with Lee Scratch Perry alone. My favorite bits are his post punk between the gaps experiments.
This history orbits the mid 80’s when he marshalled the best musicians he could find including singers such as The Pop Group’s Mark stewart, Skip mc Donald, Doug Wimbush and Keith le Blanc (who played on ‘Rappers Delight’), New York’s scratch Dj Cheese and his own self tilled role as a ‘mixologist’. These ‘geniuses’ as he descibed them were marshalled under an umbrella of groups including the formidable Tackhead.
Bunkered primerally in the studio these combinations made music that was at times equivalent to the sensation of putting on a space helmet then sticking your head in a hiphop wind tunnel full of glass. Revolutionary music for Thatcher – Regan times. So just how did this attitude get created? “ I was angry then. I was into dub with all these guys and we just bastardised the equipment often on a diet of amphetamines and weed searching for specific sonic solutions.” Of course it all manifested itself in a form of Dub in the end, “ Dub,the domain of the engineers” he has previoulsy labeled the process.
By his own admission he hasn’t been in Ireland as much as he would like, diverse to the last he supported Blur in Dublin long ago, but that’s about to change. He’s tight with Ireland’s godfather of the Ragga chat, MC Ri-Ra, who he worked with on tracks like ‘25 O’ Clock in the Mornin.’’ “ What I love about Ri-Ra’s whole deal is that he’s authentic: he writes, sings, raps, makes the beats and it’s always fully Irish, not a ‘follow monkey copycat’ thing. He should be a star! People should be shouting out his name! Hopefully he might come down to Limerick for our night.’’
The Limerick show will primarily be a Dub based Dj show with old and new Jamaican tracks featuring Sherwood’s own creations now that he has taken “my name off the back of the record and put it on the front.” ‘Upside Down World’ which he describes as a twisted folk journey is the current one to look out for following on from two previous solo albums. Expect drops of dubstep and junglist slabs of noise in the mix with much to sonically unite the bass tribes on the night.
On a final note emphasising the diversity of this dub warrior, check his my space for tour details which sees him in the Sydney Opera house later this year with Lee scratch Perry and Brian Eno.
For info & sounds log onto www.myspace.com/adrianmaxwellsherwood & www.myspace.com/rootsfactorylimerick