Macro Dub Infection

VARIOUS ARTISTS

MACRO DUB INFECTION VOLUME 1

Virgin 

Melody Maker, the ideological absolute midpoint of the 1990s

by Simon Reynolds 

     Before ambient, before disco, dub reggae hit upon two crucial notions: the idea that bass and drum could be the melodic foreground of music, and the idea of intermittance, of a decentered mix-scape wherein sounds morph, fluctuate, drift, disappear. Today, these once scandalous ideas are the structural principles governing all the interesting strands of modern music, pop and avant-garde.

            As its title suggests, "Macro Dub Infection" recognises and celebrates the fact that dub's legacy's lives largest as a rogue chromosone in genres that aren't directly descended from '70s roots reggae, mongrel genres like trip hop, post-rock, drum & bass and ambient techno.  Compiled by Kevin Martin (from God/Ice/Techno-Animal) as a sequel to his landmark "Isolationism" anthology, "Macro" has some agreeable offerings from digi-dub revivalists like The Disciples, Irration Steppas and The Rootsman, but the contributions from non-dreadlocked figures such as Tricky, 4 Hero and Laika are far more excitingly experimental. 

     On the jungle front,  Spring Heel Jack and 4 Hero amply substantiate the notion that drum & bass is cyber-dub. On Spring Heel's "Double Edge", reverb-hazy piano chords and whispery trails of hi-hat hurtle down echoey corridors and shafts, but at fin de millenium hyperspeed as opposed to torpid skank-rate.  Even better is 4 Hero's "The Paranormal of Four Forms", lulling you into a false sense of tranquility, then erupting into a pandemonium of accelerating/decelerating breaks that zig-zag between all four corners of the mix; breaks so heavily processed they sound like they're drummed on foil, quartz and bed-springs.  The track then winds down into an paradisical oasis of phusion-tinged electro.

     Trip hop also comes up with the goods. Nothing like the "Maxinquaye" original, Tricky's "Ambient Pumpkin" is as barren and queerly-lit as one of Saturn's moons; New Kingdom honeycomb their acid-rap palava with pockets of dubspace and reverse-loop their cymbals like Jimi on "Are You Experienced?"; Earthling's lost '94 classic "Nothingness" is a swelteringly humid slice of paranoia-funk a la Miles' "On The Corner". Doyens of 'new complexity techno', Bedouin Ascent throw down some densely tangled monsterbeats somewhere at the intersection of 'Rockit' era Herbie Hancock, Man Parrish and 808 State, while technohead-turned-triphopper eccentric Wagon Christ constructs a minimal-is-maximal matrix of metallic timbres.

     But perhaps the most intriguing item on this remarkably consistent 2-CD comp is by the barely-classifiable post-rock unit Tortoise, who have an unusually dub-tweaked sensibility for Yanks. On "Goriri", it sounds like they caked each track on the mixing desk in sonic matter, then wiped off large swathes, leaving behind a whispering wall of spidery percussion and furtive glints and smears of mosaic texture.

     "Macro Dub" shows that dub methodology has contaminated all forms of modern dance and  head musik. There's no putting the genie back in the bottle; all attempts to protect the sacrosanct integrity of the Song are mere ostrich-head-in-sand rearguard manoeuvres. You're either dub-wize or you've consigned yourself to history's junkheap.