CD Description
~scape, the label managed by Berlin's Stefan Betke (Pole), is perpetrating a unique variant of digital dub. Betke's hand-selected producers may have traded the deft slider and fader tricks of the early Jamaican masters for hard-disc tweaksand programming dexterity. But they're not merely keeping the spirit of dub alive; they're also purposefully rewiring the mad science of the version for the age of the digital edit.
JUST LANDED catches Cologne-based digi-dub maestro Bern'd Friedmann (Drome, Nonplace Urban Field, Flanger) rompingin green New Zealand with antipodean allies the Nu Dub Players. Crucial Guenther's bass is the bottom line here, providing the rock-steady seismic undertow that buoys the crew's piping, old-school-Kingston melodies and expertly integrated nu-school digital mischief. DJ Booth's trippy turntable effects, Bernie the Bolt's crafty drumming, and Friedmann's constant production tampering send the dream-paced JUST LANDED skanking down the daffiest of digi-dub detours. And when dubwise heritage, high spirits, and microprocessor monkeyshines meet, as they do so vividly in "Hut Selector", "Cassock Attack", "Railway Palace, Melbourne", and "I Shot the Fashion Victim", it all makes for a memorable, marvelously musical mixing-desk melee.