Musically early January is much like the weather and landscape; a virtual wasteland. Not much really happens in terms of new releases and people generally retreat to either those releases they discovered through the previous year's "Best Of" lists or old nostalgic favorites to get them through one of the bleakest months of the year. For my part, I hit the black metal pretty hard. Some people drink coffee for breakfast, I shoot my veins full of "A Blaze In The Northern Sky" and Burzum to get me going in the morning. Once the day yawns, I typically turn to the crushing doom of Earth or Sunn 0))). I find that these blacked branches of the Tree of Metal allow me to feel at one to some degree with the dark natural forces that hold us all at bay during these short days. When the weekend comes though, well even I need something a bit more sunny. It feels wrong to go back to the previous summer's soundtracks, and anyway indie rock just seems so trivial and impotent against the dying of the light. It's usually at these times that I find solace in dub, minimalist techno and what we would generically call world music. By world, I of course don't mean that crap you find at Borders and New Age bookstores, I mean the incredible amounts of soulful and brilliant re-issued music that would have been lost on western ears but for labels like Sublime Frequencies, Buda, Soundway, Analog Africa, B-Music/Finders Keepers and Mississippi Records.This season two such releases from late 2010 have come to find a comfortable resting place on my hi-fi. The first is the relatively unknown reggae/psyche masterpiece "Peace And Love." Originally released in 1974 by Dadawah, "Peace And Love" is a deeply hypnotic and moving piece of "nyabinghi," or Rastafarian spiritual music. Dadawah, otherwise known as Ras Michael, was a session musician at Studio One back in the 1960s and is responsible for a number of singles released through that legendary entity, he was also the first member of the Rastafari movement to have a reggae radio program in Jamaica. While he has released a number of albums, he is also an major proponent of the Rastafarian religion, acting an evangelist, ambassador and diplomat for the Ethiopian Orthodox Tawahido Church. Dadawah's spirituality informs "Peace And Love" throughout; this is not a dubbed-out stoner record, nor is it a frat-boy party record, it is a solemn sincere spiritual recording that pushes it's politics and religion in the most straight-forward manner possible. That may sound like a bummer, but I promise it isn't.
Dadawah and his crew create a sound close to dub, but in an entirely organic manner. Strikingly, unlike most reggae, there is nary a rhythm guitar to be found on "Peace And Love," instead the predominant musical template features a psyche blues lead that snakes its way around hazy bass and African-inspired percussion. As a result, "Peace And Love" is quiet unlike any other reggae you have probably heard, which typically features that strummed rhythm guitar, and dubbed out but simple percussion. Rather, this is an intensely deep journey into organic textures and sounds, which grooves and trips out in a manner that owes as much to psychedelia as it does to King Tubby. Also unique is that the tracks extend far beyond the norm. The album consists of only four songs, each clocking in somewhere between seven to ten minutes long. That length gives Dadawah the space to stretch out his ideas and draw the listener into each track; a tactic that works, because this recording will have you hypnotized by the end of the second number "Seventy-Two Nations" easily. Once "Zion Land" begins - forget about it, you're in for the night laying on your back staring at the ceiling. This is a record that clearly influenced Massive Attack and Tricky, even if it they never actually heard it. It's truly the original trip-hop.
The second record is yet another amazing compilation by the folks at Soundway. In what is someway a follow up to the essential "Nigeria Rock Special: Psychedelic Afro Rock & Fuzz Funk In 1970s Nigeria" Soundway has further mined Afro-rock goodness out of the fertile early 70s Nigerian scene with "The World Ends: Afro Rock & Psychedelia In 1970s Nigeria." Named after the incredible titular track by The Black Mirrors, this compilation brings together the anxiety, tension and anger in the wake of a brutal civil war that found a western-allied military dictatorship in power. The same environment that gave birth to Fela Kuti, one of the greatest musicians in the history of music, gave birth to the songs on this compilation. Certainly while this is not at the same level as Fela, there is much to move the body, mind and heart here. Like all Soundway collections you could spend a year with this record and still not entirely digest all that it has to offer. I feel for Dusted's Nate Knaebel who slaved for four months writing a review of this record and wrote that he still doesn't feel like he did it any justice. As with most Soundway comps, it would take years to fully appreciate everything that is contained within, which is all the more reason to pick this up, have it near the stereo and explore it repeatedly. To get a sense of how great this collection is, just listen to a song like "Be Kind, Be Foolish, Be Happy" by the pointedly named Chuck Barrister and the Voices of Darkness, it grooves like hell, but it also incites ever so subtly. In many ways it is reminiscent of Tropicália, both in terms of musical and intent; this is party music for serious people. It is a groove born out of violence and horror and there is nothing quite like it, other than other early 70s Nigerian music, which for my money is some of the best music made in the history of music - Wagner and Mozart be damned. No seriously, Wagner and Mozart be damned, listen to either of these records instead. Neither of them wrote a scorcher like The Hykkers' "Deiyo Deiyo (Akpuwunlobi)."
Dadawah - Zion Land
The Black Mirrors - The World Ends
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