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Category: Music
The new Dr. Das release Emergency Basslines arrived in the mailbox last week and hasn't left my car's CD player since. The album sucks you in from the get go with its no-nonsense digitally grimed up aesthetic, and doesn't let up until the final strains of the album's closing track.
The overall tone of the album is ominous and dark, an undercurrent of anger and rebelliousness pulsing throughout. This could be the soundtrack for an urban uprising in London, Paris or Beirut -- but the participants and the targets remain unclear, anonymous, shadowy.
The tracks follow a pattern. Starting with Indian and Arabic percussion loops -- tabla, dholak, mridangam, dumbek -- layers of gritty beats set a groove punctuated by shards and showers of digital noise. And it is all anchored by bass -- loads of it, sub-bass frequencies that shake your ribcage and rattle your cochlea.
I arrived at this album cold, with little prior exposure to Asian Dub Foundation, aside from one of their very early EP releases. (Dr. Das, until recently, played bass guitar for ADF.) The appeal was in Dr. Das' minimalist approach -- bass, beats, samples, noise.
It reminded me of my early experimental days of recording overdubbed tape tracks with beats I programmed in my Roland TR-707 while playing basslines over the top. I wanted to see how a similar approach -- although a lot more sophisticated -- might yield different sounds. The fresh and edgy results don't disappoint.
Surprisingly, despite the bass focus of the album, it's Dr. Das' beats and regenerative noise that grab me the most. It's clear that he knows how to program ruff and ready beats -- the kicks thump, the snares crack, the rhythms propel each song along with a vibrant urgency. From a production standpoint, everything sounds crisp and clear -- every element sits in the mix where it should be; not an easy task given the controlled chaos of the material. Ramjac plays a big role in the production department for the album.
At times, the effects threaten to overwhelm -- suddenly ascending digital feedback appears out of nowhere like an audio virus, and is swiftly and deftly silenced -- yet the track continues to flow seamlessly. You hear the dub influence throughout, but this is not King Tubby or even Adrian Sherwood -- this is entirely Dr. Das' own sound.
There are some minor quibbles -- the tracks do sound a little repetitious at times, and I wish more experimentation was evident in the basslines themselves. The bass in each song has the same subby sound with the highs eq'd out -- the dub/reggae aesthetic. How would those rock solid bass lines sound if they were synthed up, run through a wah pedal, etc?
Emergency Basslines is available on the VU Recordings label.
Personal favorites:
Kosmic Pranksta
Free Agent
Pitch Black
Communique
4:51 AM
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