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‘A Trip to Bolgatanga’: Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah on African Head Charge’s first new album in 12 years


Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah (courtesy of On-U Sound)

Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah and Adrian Sherwood inaugurated the daring studio project African Head Charge in 1981 with My Life In A Hole In The Ground. Both in the studio and in live performance, African Head Charge has burned up the intervening decades exploring unknown Mystery Spots of sonic experience, transmitting dub sonar signals in every dimension where sound travels.

A Trip to Bolgatanga, the band’s first LP in twelve years, may be the most sublime entry in the African Head Charge catalog. I recently spoke with Bonjo about Africa, drumming, his youth as a runaway Rasta, and much else. An edited transcript follows.

First of all, my condolences on Mark Stewart’s death. He was a person I liked very much.

That is a very big loss for not just me, but for all On-U Sound.

You played with him throughout his career, right?

Yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah! I was a part of the original Maffia, the band, yes. I was a part of it, the original one, before Skip [McDonald] and all that, yes. So I knew him very well.

Did you meet him through Adrian?

Yes, I got to know him through Adrian.

When you and Adrian started African Head Charge, had you been to Africa yet?

No. That time I didn’t go. I didn’t go to Africa until ’94. But even then, I still had Africa inside me, you know, Africa was already in me because of the way I was brought up.

Those early records, I guess it’s an imaginary Africa, and I’m curious about how that compares to your experiences in Africa. Did you have any ideas about Africa that have changed?

Oh, yes, I’ve had a lot of it, because I was born in a place in Jamaica called Clarendon, which is the rural part of Jamaica. And in that area you’ll find, apart from the big Rasta camp there—my grandmother’s sister was the head of the Rasta camp there, yeah?—and then up the road from where I live, about five minutes’ walk from where I’m living, there’s a Poco church there, Pocomania church, Poco. Which is a part of the African culture. These people brought—you know, they’re slaves, then, let’s use the word “slave,” the people, them that was taken from West Africa, they were maintaining their spirituality and their culture. Although it wasn’t a lot of them, ‘cause the colonial people tried to beat it out of them, but a few of them kept it.

There’s a woman that was close to where we’re living, her name is Mother Hibbert. She was about two, three minutes’ walk from where I’m living, Mother Hibbert. That’s Toots, have you heard of Toots Hibbert, the Maytals?
 

Photo by @marg_yo

Of course!

All right. Well, Toots’ auntie. See, that’s where Toots gets that all that script from as well. Okay, Toots’ auntie, her name was Mother Hibbert, and she was like the spiritual woman in the area, you know? We have many churches, we have church like Catholics, we have church like Nazareth Assembly, which my mom and dad always were a part of that, Protestant, all kind of things. But we have this one church in the area where they were just doing African [spirituality], and her name was Mother Hibbert. So, from where I am, once I hear the drumming starts in the evening, some evenings, I just go there, even though sometimes my family, they would beat us for going there, but I would go.

Because our family, they thought that anything to do with the Black culture were like Obeah, voodoo, or ungodly things, or whatever, you know? But me as a child, I wasn’t really thinking about—had nothing to do with no Obeah, voodoo spirituality or anything, it’s just: I heard the drumming, I heard it and that draw me to go there. So I used to go there, ‘cause when they see me, some of the drummers and their people, they saw that I keep coming all the time, so they start to give me something to play, like a tambourine or some sticks or something, until I start to play some drums as well, you know? And that’s when I was about eight years old, I was very young. So because of that I learned the Poco drumming, which was drumming that came directly from Africa, which later, that same Poco drum slowed down to become Nyabinghi drumming, same Poco drumming, okay? So that’s where I got the African drumming inside me before I even go to Africa.

It’s in a spiritual, religious context, too, which I think is interesting.

That’s right. Exactly, exactly. ‘Cause Mother Hibbert is a woman, like, when people have a spiritual problem they will go to see her and she will solve it or something like that. She’s a spiritualist, you know? She can heal people and all that kind of thing. She used a lot of herbs, she knows about herbs and different trees and bush and whatever, but she’s also a spiritual person. She believes in, she work with the ancestors.

So were Poco and Nyabinghi the first drumming techniques—

Yes, well what happened with the Poco drum, the Poco drum was the original drums that came with the slaves, you understand what I’m saying? That drumming. But the thing is, like you say something is bad—people don’t want it because it’s too Black, it’s too African, it’s too whatever. And our great-grandparents, they were taught to only believe in whatever religion the slavemasters gave us, they had to follow that. Well, there was a few people like the Maroons and these people, who decide “no, we’re going to maintain our thing.” Which is a very small amount of people, not a lot! Out of a hundred, maybe you’ll get two percent. So I was just lucky that I lived very close to Mother Hibbert. And there was another person again, his name was Arwa (?). But it’s Mother Hibbert that I really went and get that African spirit inside of me.
 

A Trip to Bolgatanga

Tell me about Bolgatanga and the name of this album.

Bolgatanga, you know, I was in Ghana, and the time came for me to come back. So the same week that I had to come back, the planes stop running. They say no plane is running ‘cause of COVID and all that kind of thing. So I thought, well, I did record some drumming earlier anyway, you know? But I decide, yes, I’ll go and spend time in Bolgatanga because it’s very hot there and they said COVID don’t like heat.

So I had a friend lived there, one of them was King Ayisoba who was a top musician in Ghana. He’s the king of the kologo. The first track you hear on it is him playing the guitar and the chanting, and we collaborate on doing that. But he was the king of kologo music, he was the number one, and he had a hit song some years ago, number one hit song in Ghana, “I Want to See My Father.” So while I was in Bolgatanga, I get to know him and we become friends. And Adrian suggest to me—I told Adrian what I’m doing, I said, listen Adrian, I’m doing this, I’m doing that, and I’m using most of my money to do it; if my money run out, I’ll let him send me more money so I can pay the musicians and the drummers and whatever—and he suggested if I can get King Ayisoba to do something. I don’t think he knew that he was in Bolgatanga. So when he said that, it was easy for me to do. I just went to King Ayisoba and pay him and some of the drummers and play a session, and we just went in the studio and did two tracks, you know?

So I was spending a lot of time in Bolgatanga. I love Bolgatanga. Bolgatanga is a place where it is extremely hot. When I say hot, hot, hot, hot! So hot that when you go to any drinking spot, or a club, or any place of entertainment, they have a swimming pool there. Everywhere you go there’s entertainment going on near a swimming pool. ‘Cause when people are dancing or enjoying or drinking or eating or whatever, they get hot, so they wanna jump in the pool, and sometime they stay in there and enjoy the music or whatever. So that place is very hot, so I decide I’ll stay there.

And in fact, my woman, there’s a girl on the album who sings and plays some percussion on it, and her name is Angela Akanuoe, she’s from Bolgatanga as well.

It sounds like you did some of the recording in Ghana?

Yeah, most of it. The foundation of the album was done in Ghana. I just came over here with Adrian and we overdub other things on top of that, like some bass, some keyboards, some this and that. But we did the vocals and the drumming there, and the chanting.
 

 
So the contributions of Skip [McDonald] and Doug [Wimbish]—

They came after, they came after. They came, and I think I’m gonna be working like that now, because I like that idea, you know? Well, I’ve always been setting the foundation, anyway, for African Head Charge, and then other people come and do other things on top of that, you know? That’s how it works from a long time. But this time, it wasn’t just me alone as drummer, there’s other drummers as well. And I wanted to get some different vibes of drummers, you know? I have one of them who’s working in the band with me right now, you know, one of the drummers from Ghana. But he’s a part of the Ga. I did some of the drumming in Bolgatanga, and I did a lot of it in Accra. Accra, you have the Ga. It’s a different tribe. And they’re good drummers.

Different drums.

Yeah, different types of drummers, yes. Every tribe has got a different way of expressing drums and dance, you know?

Is it different instruments, or different ways of playing?

It’s the same instrument but different ways of playing.

Why has it been so long since the last African Head Charge album?

Well, after you’ve done—is it twelve albums we’ve done already, you know? We’ve done twelve albums. So maybe it was time for us, and for me as well, to really start to think about the next move, you know?

I’ve been to going to Ghana from ’94. And I just decide that, so many different tribes, I want to record a lot of different kind of drumming, from not just Ghana, you know. Maybe next time I’ll go to Gambia, or to Sierra Leone, or to somewhere else. But that is what my plan is for the future. Because it’s African Head Charge, so I want to cover as much of Africa as possible, and combine it with the Jamaican thing, just combine that, you know? Because I was born and grew up in Jamaica, but at the same time I have the African inside of me through the Poco church and the Nyabinghi and so forth. So I’m just trying to link them together, find a way of putting it all together, or as much as I can. I can’t put it all, but I put as much as I can, yeah?

So I’m planning on the next album—I start to plan the next album already, I start to write things down, you know, and things like that. So when I go to Africa—I’ve got family there, you know, I have children there, I’ve got grandchildren there as well. So it’s not just going there to have fun and to see my children and whatever whatever. When I go there I want to do creative things, so that when I come back here, me and Adrian and whoever else is there, we can come together and take it from where I’ve taken it.
 

African Head Charge c. 1993

There’s an interview that you gave to the Wire a few years ago, and I might have misunderstood something you said. Did you play with Fela Kuti?

No. Well, I jammed with them, I jammed with them. What happened was, a long time ago, it could be the early Eighties or something like that, I used to audition a lot. When I found out that drumming is what I really wanted to do, I used to go and audition, sometimes just playing in a pub. I look in the Melody Maker, at that time, at the Melody Maker and the New Musical Express. And it used to come out like Thursday and I used to buy it, and of course they had adverts, “Musician Wanted,” “Conga Player Wanted,” or whatever. I’ll ring them up and go for the audition.

This time, a band from Nigeria came to London, and the band was called the Funkees. And the Funkees, one of their conga players didn’t make it, I think it was a visa or a passport problem or whatever. So they put an advert in the paper, and when I went there I met up with this player called Sonny Akpan, and Chyke, and all these other—I mention those names ‘cause those were the ones, sometimes you’re in a band and you get close to one or two people. I got close to Sonny Akpan, I got close to Chkye; Chyke was another drummer, the kick drummer.

So what happened was, through the way we like, ‘cause I mean in those days I used to smoke a lot of ganja, anyway. I don’t take any drink, but I smoke a little weed sometimes, and I think Fela love it, you know? At that time, we have this ganja that’s coming in from Jamaica, it’s called Red Beard. We don’t have it anymore. That ganja was like medicine. It gives you appetite and it’s really good. Up to now, today, I don’t see anymore herb like that, you know?

So I used to get it and I used to go down there with it. And the first time I went there, I didn’t meet Fela the first time I go, but someone took it and give him and tell him, say, “Hey, we have a Jamaican friend who’ll come here and bring this weed,” and he love it! So the next time I went there, the herb was sent up to him, and then I start playing, ‘cause in those days I didn’t really talk a lot, somehow. About 35, oh, many years ago, more, 40 years maybe. So if I see a drum, that was my way of communication. I’d just start to play it. I’d start to play bloong! bloong!, I’d start to play some riddim, play something. And then some of the other drummers from Fela’s band, all the other musicians, they’ll come and they’ll sit close, and they started playing! So we’ll find, after about an hour, we’ll find like about 30 people are playing. And some nice girls was there, too, playing, and I realize that all of them was Fela’s wife and all that. So we could only look, but nothing, you know what I mean?

And then Fela came down and saw me playing with all idren, and Fela: “Bonjo!” Fela himself called me Bonjo. My name was not Bonjo at that time! So he call me that, and I try to find out why, why’d he call me that? And they said I look like someone in Nigeria with that name, and the person is also a percussionist, so that person is like my twin, you know what I mean? So he called me that name because I look like somebody, one of his people that he knows in Nigeria. So that’s how I got the name from Fela.
 

via Discogs

But I never played with him live. ‘Cause he was living in this big mansion. Ginger Baker, there’s this guy called Ginger Baker, this drummer. Have you heard of Ginger Baker?

Yes!

Well, Ginger Baker have some big mansion, I forget where the place was, and Ginger Baker give the mansion to Fela so he could live there with all his wives and all his musicians and everything, big place. That’s where I used to go, me and Sonny Akpan and Chyke and that, we used to go down there. So I used to jam with them, I did jam with them.

They had a big room downstairs. Massive room! They have all the rooms upstairs around the place, but downstairs was just a big room and playing the drums, you know what I mean? So much drums. I never seen so much drums in one place like that before.

They were speaking their languages there, you know, and I didn’t talk because I didn’t know how to communicate with them too much in their language. Although some of them like Sonny and Chyke, some of them could speak English, so I could talk with them, but I didn’t really talk a lot. Burn my weed, burn the smoke, and play some African drum, some Poco drum, the one that I learned from all small. And that fit right in, you know? I suppose if I’d hung around much or if I was a bit pushy or whatever maybe I could’ve been playing in the band, but I was playing in the other band, the Funkees. ‘Cause the Funkees is the band that warm up before he plays. Then later, the band changed from the Funkees to Efya (?), and I was still with them when they were in Efya (?), too, until that split up and Sonny went to work with Eddy Grant.

He was a great player. He was like my teacher, to tell you the truth, he put me further than where I was in the African drum. He took me further than where I was in the drumming, ‘cause I had to learn from him. You play something, and then I have to play what he’s playing, you know? And so that’s how it goes. And that’s why they like me as well, ‘cause when you go for the audition, Sonny would come to you and play something, and then he’d tell you to play it. When I hear it, I just play it, ‘cause I don’t know, I’m like that. I hear something and I learn to play it, you know? And that’s why they like me.

So I was playing more like the rhythm, he was playing the lead part. That’s why even now, I play lead in some song, but I’m more of a rhythmic player. Pulse, maintain the pulse. I learned that from working with some of the guys from Fela Kuti. ‘Cause if you listen to the Fela Kuti music, you notice they maintain the pulse. If somebody’s playing “one, two, three, one, two, three,” if they’re playing that, they’ll play that for an hour, and it won’t slow up and it won’t speed up. They had that discipline. I learned that discipline from them too, although I learned it from Jamaica anyway, but I learn it more when I got to meet them.

I feel like that’s why those performances can go on for so long, is because the groove is steady.

That’s right. They can play one song for half an hour, or more than that. It’s a groove, and you can get hypnotized in the groove, and get carried away. That’s what we like, we like to get into that, where it gets inside you.
 

Photo by Jeff Pitcher

It sounds like you’ve been a student of drumming techniques since you were a kid.

From I’m seven years old, from I’m seven years old. Because even my grandmother auntie, her name is Nana Bonchie, she had a camp which is a Rasta camp—some people said a Rasta church, but it’s a camp, really—where this man was head of the camp. If you Google his name, his name is the Reverend Claudius Henry. At that time, he was the top Rastaman in the whole world. The number one, the top Rastaman, the founder, the first Rastaman, his name is Howell, Leonard Percival Howell. Then after Howell, the toughest or the greatest out of them was Henry, because he was the one who was organizing for us to go back to Africa and all that. ‘Cause when I was about eight, nine, I remember a lot of them left the camp, said they were going to Africa and they all came back. I remember I used to talk to him and ask him why. When I grow up, I came back to London, and I came back to Jamaica, and I went to, at this time he built a church in a different place, near May Pen, which is the capital of Clarendon, he built a church there, and the church is called Bethel. And you know me, I always like to ask these elders questions. I asked him why did he build a church and call it Bethel, he said God told him to do that. And then I asked him why he organized that trip for all the people to go to Africa, and he said he wanted to see how serious the people were, ‘cause they didn’t go! You know, somehow they turned back, and they come home, people was laughing at them and all this kind of thing.

And there’s other things he tell me to make me strong as a Rasta, as well. There’s other things that he shared with me. But he was a revolutionary Rastaman. The hung his son. In those days, they used to hang Rasta, hang people who were thought to be criminal, you know? So one of his son, Ronald Henry, they hung him and four other people with him. I was there when all that was happening. I was about maybe ten, eleven years old, but I remember when the whole thing was going on, you know? Yeah.

And he showed me where they shoot him in his head, where the bullet chip in his head. When I come there, and he heard that I was there, I remember I heard him say “Oh, the messenger has come?” Because I’m so young, they think I’m the one who’s gonna go around, and go around, and tell the world about what was happening. So he called me a messenger. I never take up on that, like go around and say this or that, I don’t do that, but I remember hearing him say that.

And then, because I’m always asking him a question, he took me and showed me different rooms. And he showed me a room, he said, “Marcus Garvey’s spirit is in this room.” Told me, “Haile Selassie’s spirit is in this room.” He told me, “Kwame Nkrumah’s spirit is in this room.” Different leaders of Africa’s spirit is in this room. And later when I went to Africa, I realize something he’s telling me that is there in Africa, ‘cause in Africa you have stool rooms. And those stool rooms are where the kings are, all the kings dem have stool rooms. When somebody’s gonna be a king and take over, they get the spirit of some king that passed, maybe a hundred years ago, fifty years ago, or something like that. So they’ll take you in there and let you sit on the stool three times, and then they give you a name, which is a stool name. Like they wanted to give me a name called Nana Kwabena Agyekum because they wanted me to be a chief there.
 

Baking Peacemaker bread (via Duke University Libraries)

But I realized that what the Reverend Claudius Henry was showing me, he showed me a lot of things, what I would then see thirty years later, twenty-odd years later, in Africa! He started making bread as well in my area, Clarendon. If you do any research about it, this bread things is called Peacemaker bread. And I would ask him about that. The answer he’d give me was “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall see God.” So, every question I’d ask him, he’d give me an answer, you know? I remember one time I even said to him, “How come people look at you like you are God?” ‘Cause he’s like my grandfather, you know, so like a grandson, you can say anything. But I was like that, I was always asking questions.

‘Cause I remember going up there to the Sabbath, we’d take a truck from lower Clarendon, to move to the next place, Bethel, where’s he’s moved his church. And I say, “How come the people are looking at you and singing songs as if you are God?” And that’s when he was telling me that we are all Gods. That cleared a lot of things up for me as well, to know that we are all creators, we are all God, but we are the creative force, which is nature, you understand what I’m saying? That is really the power, the force. So I learn a lot from him, and because I learn so much from him, sometimes I have problems. Because a lot of people didn’t get the chance to sit with somebody great like Reverend Claudius Henry. A lot of people didn’t get the pleasure of opting to sit and see people like Mother Hibbert answering other people, you know? And so, at a very small age, I was drawn to these people. Even though my parents, they are Christians.

Like my mom used to go to a church called Nazareth Assembly, and when I went to where my grandmother was living, my grandmother was living in August Town, so one time I went and spent some time in August Town, and they wanted to send me to some Catholic church, and my spirit couldn’t take it! For some reason, my spirit couldn’t take it. Everywhere they send me, my spirit couldn’t take it. I went and live in the country, in Victoria, Thompson Town, which is upper Clarendon, up in the mountains. My spirit couldn’t take it neither, ‘cause these people are so much into church! Mmm. I’m not saying anything is wrong with it, because people do what they want to do, but when somebody want to force you to go, and if you don’t go, you’re a bad boy, you know? And some people will go because they want, “I am a good boy,” so they go, I’ve seen some of my sisters and some of my brothers, they’ll go to church, because after that, you’re gonna be treated really nice, you know?
 

 
So truth, I was treated like the black sheep of the family—well, that’s what they call it, right? I was treated as the bad one. Out of nine children, I was the bad one. That’s the reason why I didn’t go to school by eleven. I didn’t go back to school at eleven years old because I had to run away, because I just didn’t like the idea of [laughs] when I saw those churches. Especially the Catholic church. I went to the Catholic church, and I saw those statues, and it freaked me out! It give me nightmares, you know what I mean? 

And plus, I had a strong voice when I was small. And when I was six and five and all that age group, before I start to realize, no, that’s not what I want to do, ‘cause I realized no, I didn’t want to do that when I was seven and a half years old. I used to go and sing in my mother’s church, a church called Nazareth Assembly, and I used to sing, like, “Jesus loves all the little children, all the children of the world,” and every Sunday they’d dress me up and I’d sing. And I was a good boy, [made] my mom proud of me, dress me up nice, a good boy. But once I decided to go, when I hear the Nyabinghi drums and the Poco drum, I felt good about those places! I decide I want to go there, and I didn’t really want to go back to that church. So I was like the outcast. I was like the outcast of the family.

I ran away. Everywhere they send me, I would run away. I would go and sleep under people house, because I didn’t like it. When I went to August Town, that’s what I was doing. I’d run and jump over the fence and run, and go and sleep in graveyards, and all kind of thing. I was only about eleven, twelve years old. But what I’ve learned, that’s what give me a good life. ‘Cause although I didn’t go to school to learn about physics and all these kind of things—I was good at math. But it’s the drumming, that’s what helped me when I came to London. I was doing workshops and also going to schools and get children and teach some of them drumming and so on. And I see some of those children grow up to be big boys now and playing drums and playing different instruments!

The drumming, to me, is my life. ‘Cause I didn’t learn mechanic, I didn’t learn anything. I just, you know, my ears, when I hear something, I would just hear something and I would play something that fit it. You understand? It doesn’t matter what music it is. When I’m in the studio, people are playing a song or playing something and I hear it, and I would play something that suits it.
 

 
Even as a small boy, you felt the pull of these other teachers away from that Catholic tradition. It’s like you were already kind of formed. It’s mysterious to think about what that is in a child.

Well, I think I was lucky. I was lucky in a way, you know. Some people are brought up in a upper area where people are rich and they go to good schools and they this and that. I was brought up in Clarendon, which was very poor at the time. The only way people used to survive is by cutting the sugar cane and load it on a dray or a truck and taking it to Yarmouth or Monymusk. These are the places where they would make rum. So that’s how they would live. Or they would go and dig sand and pull up a truck. That’s what my dad used to do, put sand in a truck, fill up a truck with sand, him and his friends, and then they take the truck, weigh it, and whatever it weighs they pay them for how much it weighs, you know what I mean? And then the truck will come back, and they’ll fill it up again, and so forth. In Clarendon, there was a lot of work like that. Task work. Work where you get paid for what you do. Like somebody will say to you, “There’s some grass there, from there to there,” and they’ll measure it and tell you how much you’re getting for it, and if you agree to do it for the price, “Let’s do it!”

So that’s how I used to survive. I used to survive by cutting cane, loading sugar cane—I’m talkin’ ‘bout I’m twelve years, ‘cause I was very strong when I was that age. My mom and father wasn’t there, and plus I ran away anyway; I had run away, because I couldn’t take the pressure that they were giving me, and I didn’t want to go to the [laughs] Catholic church. So they looked upon me as a bad boy! ‘Cause in Jamaica at that time, if you don’t go to church, they think that you have some evil spirit in you or you are bad or something like that. You have to talk about Jesus all the time, “Jesus, Jesus,” and be baptized like some of my sisters. They got baptized and they were treated well! And I used to think, it’s not fair. Because if you have children, and you have, say, nine children, and one or two of them is not in church, you should still love them the same way. But the Jamaican parents, it wasn’t like that, you know. And it took me a long time, I think I had a chip on my shoulder, as well; it took me a long time to get over it. ‘Cause I wanted to be loved like all my brothers and sisters were loved, and so forth.

But I think, in the end, we come to something where I knew that my mom loved me. ‘Cause my mom, before she died, and my dad, they actually expressed their love for me, and that made me feel good. Because at first I thought they hated me. Sometimes I was looking in the mirror thinking, “Hey, maybe I’m ugly! Why is it, what’s the problem? Why?” This Christianity thing is so serious about Black people—I’m talking about where I know, I know about Jamaica, very serious. If you don’t go to church, they think that you are something bad. And especially with me, I go to place where they don’t like, I mean, I go to the Nyabinghi church. I go and play Nyabinghi drums, ‘cause I like the chanting.

One time I was a part of the Nyabinghi group. I’m talkin’ ‘bout when I was eight, nine, seven to nine, those age group, three of us, me, Vern and Owen, we were the three youth drummer in the camp. We play before Bongo Black and all the rest of Count Ossie. The great Count Ossie used to come there when I’m a small boy. And sometime they would teach us one or two things, you know what I mean? I learned to play lead keke. Out of the three of the young group, I was the leader of the keke. And I had a strong voice, so I was leading the chant as well. And nothing could keep me away from there, nothing at all could keep me away from going to the Nyabinghi gathering or the Poco gathering.

I remember they used to beat me so much that I run away, because I thought I can’t take no more beatings, so I run away. So now when I run away, I’ll go and run and stay with some people who had dray. We have this thing in Jamaica called “dray.” Dray is a thing where, it’s a cart, like a chariot. Two wheels, and you have three mules, right? And then you load the sugar cane on the mule and you take it to Monymusk or Yarmouth, where they take the sugar cane and they’ll weigh it and then they’ll pay you. So I used to work for some of these people. I used to work for this guy called Billy Paine, and I worked for the Charoos as well. I remember when I ran away from home, I would go and sleep in the Charoo place. ‘Cause they had a room there where they put all the, you know, this and that you put on the back of the animal, like the thing you put in his mouth and the saddle on his back. They have a room there where they keep the saddles. I remember I used to go and sleep in there, because I couldn’t go and stay at my parents’ house. But at the same time, I was free now to go to the Poco church, I was free to go to the Nyabinghi, without getting beaten. And I was earning my own money from that age, so I was okay. Until later, they sent for me to come to England. I think I came to England when I was sixteen, nearly sixteen.

Did Count Ossie make a big impression on you?

He was like my teacher. He was like—when I say “my teacher,” he used to come to the gathering, right? And a lot of us were playing and they’re teaching us songs to sing, like “Sodom and Gomorrah,” and “Babylon Come Down,” and “No Night in Zion,” they teach us all these songs. So I just learn them and chant them. I remember we had the Clarendonians. Have you heard of the Clarendonians?

No.
 

 
Which is Freddie McGregor, you heard of Freddie McGregor?

Yes, I’ve seen Freddie McGregor.

Alright, well, Freddie McGregor was in my area, ‘cause I’m from Clarendon. He’s a Clarendonian, and they used to win all the competitions. When Freddie was about ten, eleven years old, he was like a star, you know? I remember once they had a competition in May Pen, which is the capital of Clarendon. They sent me there, the three of us. That’s where I see the Skatalites and all those people. I was a lickle boy, maybe this time I was about like nine, ten years old, and I saw Don Drummond. I remember this tall man standing in a corner all by himself with his long trombone. I see them, but I never really talk to them, you know what I mean? I saw them because I went to the competition.

He must have had a sweet voice when he was a boy.

Oh, listen, Freddie McGregor—I remember, ‘cause I’m close to his age, yeah? And I remember when young women, like my aunties and all those people, they all of them love him! Especially the women. I’m not talking about the young girls, you know, I’m talking about woman, like who could be his mother and auntie, they just love Freddie!

And Yabby You doesn’t live far from where I live. He lives in a place called Longwood. So in Clarendon, they produced a lot of good artists around there. And I think people like Yabby You and certain other artists, they would pass through the camp, they would come through, you know? That camp was a very famous camp. Police used to come and raid it sometime. And as I said, they hung some of my—well, let me call them uncles, they were like father figure to me, you know? So that’s when Rasta was a revolutionary movement.

The man, Reverend Claudius Henry, his motto was, he came as the “repairer of the breach.” He came to repair the damage that’s been done to us, the mental and spiritual and physical damage that’s done to Black people, he came to repair. ‘Cause when I ask him, and he told me that’s what it was, the repairer of the breach. Just like when he told me about the Peacemaker bread, he said “blessed are the peacemakers, ‘cause they shall see God.” I’m always asking him questions so he was able to tell me things.

Because of what I know, even sometime I’m here in London, I have problem with other artists ‘cause they don’t really know what it’s all about, ‘cause some of them just came, and I get the whole thing from, I’m a first-generation Rasta.

It was hard to be a Rasta in that time, right?

Yes, like in the Fifties, it was difficult to be a Rasta. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It wasn’t easy at all. Even your own family will fight you. ‘Cause even my grandmother—I love my grandmother, I love her, she’s one of the women that I love—but she didn’t really get on with her own sister, Nana Bonchie, which is the Rasta Queen, ‘cause she married one of the Rasta elders, and the elder came from Pinnacle, where Rasta go and live, and the government tried to break Pinnacle up. So the Rasta start to move all over Jamaica, I’m talkin’ ‘bout in the Thirties, they start to move around.

So that’s when my grandmother now, she took her—like everybody in my family, or most Jamaican family in those days, when your family died you inherit—if they have ten acres of land and there’s ten children, everyone will get one acre each, you understand? So Nana Bonchie, now, which is the Rasta Queen in Clarendon, she take her land—it could be about, say, four, five acres—and she build a church, and it’s a Rasta church, right? And then Claudius Henry, now, he was having problems where he was, in a place called Rosalie Avenue, and they were chasing Rastas all over Jamaica, killing them, locking them up, cutting their dreadlocks, and he ran away. So when he ran away, he come to my grandmother’s place. And my grandmother place was a place, if you’re running away from somewhere, you can come there, they’ll accommodate you. They’ll give you food to eat, and you’ll get involved in the work or whatever or whatever. So that’s how Claudius Henry came there. So when he came, he was the high priest there. Google that name and you can remember that I told you about him.
 

Rev. Claudius Henry (via the Jamaica Gleaner)

What was the music like around Claudius Henry? Nyabinghi drumming?

Hundred percent Nyabinghi. When you go to the Poco church, though, it’s strictly Poco drumming. The Poco, the African drumming. That’s what you get there, it was a different type of drumming. When I went to Africa, that’s what they were playing there.

[After an exchange, Bonjo resumes the subject of his youth.] It was rough, I was rough, ‘cause running away from home and sleeping under people’s houses, and all this kind of thing, it was rough. But I just wanted to play drums. I used to even make drums, I just love drums. I just like the sound of drums. When I am in Africa, anywhere I go, you can guarantee drumming is going on there. [Laughs] You know what I mean? ‘Cause when I go to Accra, now, I go to a place by the beach where I know that every Friday, and Saturday, and Sunday, it’s drumming! So sometime I’ll go there, I’ll maybe book into a hotel for a day or two just to see the drumming. And my woman, Angela, who’s on the album, she’s also into the dancing and the percussion playing. I don’t think they allow the woman to play the drum, but she can play it, and then she play the percussion. And I suppose that’s what bring us together, drumming and dancing. Well, she’s more into the dancing.

Do you have a big collection of percussion instruments?

Yeah, I have a collection. I have my drums, I have my big thunder drum, I have my other drums. Some of the drums I have, people have it. ‘Cause sometime I’ll go away, like I’ll go to Ghana and I’m there for a while, so I just leave my drums with different people.

At the moment I have two drums here, I have two big conga drums, the main drum. But the bass drum and the other percussion, I let friends use them, because some of them, they don’t have it.

It’s good for them to be used rather than just sitting there.

That’s it, that’s it, yeah. Yeah man!

‘A Trip to Bolgatanga’ is available from On-U Sound, Bandcamp, Amazon, and quality record stores.
 

 

Posted by Oliver Hall
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08.04.2023
11:29 am
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New Age Steppers, ‘the only ever post-punk supergroup’
03.31.2021
06:24 pm
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Adrian and Ari, early 80s, photo by Kishi Yamamoto
 
On-U Sound released their comprehensive New Age Steppers reissues, four studio LPs (1980’s New Age Steppers, 1981’s Action Battlefield, 1983’s Foundation Steppers and 2012’s Love Forever), Avant Gardening, a newly compiled collection of outtakes, rarities and a 1983 John Peel session, and a five CD box set titled Stepping Into A New Age 1980 - 2012 earlier this month, and today they posted two previously unseen vintage promo videos, which you can watch below.

If the New Age Steppers moniker is unfamiliar to you, Mark Stewart of the Pop Group—himself a participant—called the band “the only ever post-punk supergroup.” New Age Steppers (“stepper” refers to a particular reggae riddim, and is a word in Jamaican patois meaning both dancer and criminal) was more of a long term project helmed by producer Adrian Sherwood and Ari Up of the Slits, than it was a proper band, with a revolving door cast of musical notables that included the Pop Group’s Bruce Smith, Public Image Ltd’s Keith Levene, a young Nena Cherry, Sounds editor Vivien Goldman, Steve Beresford, Slit Viv Albertine, Raincoats violinist Vicky Aspinall, Rip, Rig + Panic’s John Waddington, and vocalist Bim Sherman. The foundation of the New Age Steppers sound was provided by Eskimo Fox, Style Scott, Crucial Tony and George Oban, musicians who’d worked with Aswad, Burning Spear, Prince Far I and Gregory Isaacs and extensively with Sherwood. (There is a lot of personnel overlap in Adrian Sherwood’s various projects and it’s difficult to say where one “band” truly ends and another begins, certainly during his early 80s output.)
 

 
The New Age Steppers’ self-titled debut album is an incredibly trippy musical experience. The music is both spacious and spacey. The haunted vocals languid and distant, just floating along in the mix. Inventive sound effects that have been sliced, diced and transformed into something you don’t even know what it is anymore. Time and space are distorted. It’s the dark stuff, druggy, even a little scary. When I first heard it—as part of a cassette only release (which came in a plastic bag with a snap top and poster) titled Crucial Ninety that came out in 1981—it was still a good two years before I would ever hear Jamaican dub, so my idea of the “dub” concept was nearly entirely formed by the first two New Age Steppers albums and a Slits b-side. As a testament to just how far out the sounds were that Sherwood was able to squeeze from his mixing desk, when I first started exploring reggae, none of the “proper” JA dub I was finding sounded nearly as weird or as hard as the New Age Steppers or Creation Rebel and I was initially very discouraged! Crucial.
 

“Radial Drill” (original video)
 

“Fade Away” (original video)

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.31.2021
06:24 pm
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Drumming Is A Language: African Head Charge’s psychedelic Africa sound anthologized in new box set
02.05.2020
08:48 am
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Behold the premiere of “Peace and Happiness,” a previously unreleased track from Churchical Chant Of The Iyabinghi, one of On-U Sound’s upcoming spate of releases by African Head Charge on vinyl. African Head Charge is the long-running collaboration between master Nyabinghi percussionist Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah and maverick UK dub producer Adrian Sherwood. Some of the trippiest dub you’ll ever encounter.

Comprised of music originally released between 1990 and 2011, Drumming Is A Language, a 5 CD box set including material from these same releases alongside Churchical Chant Of The Iyabinghi—an album of unreleased music and rarities dating from the early 90s that were rescued from decaying tapes—will be released on March 6.

This new series picks up the story in 1990 with the album that is widely regarded as their masterpiece, Songs Of Praise. It’s been expanded to a double album with a whole raft of bonus tracks, as has 1993’s In Pursuit Of Shashamane Land.

2005’s Vision Of A Psychedelic Africa and 2011’s Voodoo Of The Godsent are pressed to vinyl for the first time, both as double LP sets, and as a companion piece to the Return Of The Crocodile LP of early rarities, Churchical Chant Of The Iyabinghicompiles alternate mixes and dubs from 1990 -1993. Each vinyl LP comes with a double-sided 24” x 12” poster containing an exclusive new interview with Bonjo in 5 parts alongside rare photos.


In recent years African Head Charge have returned to the live stage with a line-up featuring original African Head Charge participants.
 

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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02.05.2020
08:48 am
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‘Here Comes the Warm Dreads’: Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry & Adrian Sherwood meet Brian Eno uptown
11.29.2019
12:04 pm
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Lee Perry and Adrian Sherwood by Kishi Yamamoto
 
When Rainford, the collaboration between dub legends Lee “Scratch” Perry and On-U Sound’s Adrian Sherwood came out earlier this year, the reviews were stellar, but I will admit to being a bit skeptical.  A five star MOJO review asserted “Rainford is a late-career answer to 1978’s Roast Fish, Collie Weed & Corn Bread and beyond all reasonable expectation, fully its equal.” 

Really? The unequivocal statement above bites off an awful lot, of course, but damn if that album wasn’t—beyond all reasonable expectation—really amazing.

Next from the Perry and Sherwood team-up comes Heavy Rain, the dub version of Rainford. The press release, echoing the MOJO reviewer claims “If Rainford is 2019’s Roast Fish, Collie Weed & Corn Bread then Heavy Rain is its Super Ape,” but this time I was less skeptical. The two greatest dub producers alive, plus the talents of the great Jamaican master trombonist Vin Gordon and another fellow known for his prowess in the studio, Brian Eno? 

The track that features Eno’s contribution is a radical reworking of “Makumba Rock” one of Rainford‘s highlights. Here titled “Here Come the Warm Dreads,” it’s my understanding that Eno only worked on the right channel of the mix. It’s super trippy, almost disorienting. TURN IT UP LOUD. And smoke a joint, would you? Don’t waste it!

Heavy Rain is released on black vinyl, silver vinyl, CD as well as available for download and streaming on December 6th via On-U Sound.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.29.2019
12:04 pm
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A short film on the making of Mark Stewart’s ‘Learning to Cope with Cowardice’ (a DM premiere!)
02.28.2019
01:14 pm
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Mark Stewart and the Maffia live in Kentish Town, 1986 (Photo by Beezer)

Last month, when Mute brought out a double-LP reissue of Mark Stewart’s solo debut from 1983, Learning to Cope with Cowardice, we interviewed the man about the record and its historical, political, and musical context. Now we have a new short film by Charlie Marbles about the making of the album to show you.

If you’ve never heard Learning to Cope with Cowardice, it is a collection of sounds that wraps your nervous system around the spools of a cassette deck, then uses your brain to degauss the tape head and your cerebrospinal fluid to lubricate the capstan: a variegated cut-up of genres, styles, media, times, places, and identities. In the film below, Stewart and producer Adrian Sherwood describe the mixing and editing techniques they used to make this mental work of art, some imported from New York hip-hop and other audio collage forms—Stewart, in particular, credits Teo Macero’s work on On the Corner and William S. Burroughs’ tape experiments as inspiration—and some invented on the spot and probably never yet repeated, such as “scratching” multitrack tapes.

The singer and producer describe Stewart’s desires for unconventional sounds (Sherwood remembers a snare so trebly “it was actually cutting your eyeball off”) and his struggles to get them through the technocracy of the mastering process onto the finished record. Stewart:

I was constantly fighting with engineers about buzzes and hisses and noises, and trying to make helicopter sounds, and then they’d try and change it, they’d try and normalize you. I’m not gonna be fuckin’ normalized!

Learning to Cope with Cowardice plus The Lost Tapes is available on double vinyl (benefiting Mercy Ships) and double CD. Check out Mark Stewart’s new political resistance playlist, too.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Mark Stewart talks with Dangerous Minds about ‘Learning to Cope with Cowardice’
Dub visionary Adrian Sherwood talks about his legendary career in music

Posted by Oliver Hall
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02.28.2019
01:14 pm
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‘Man Vs. Sofa’: Premiere of new music from Adrian Sherwood & Pinch
02.21.2017
09:03 am
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You could be streaming all of the brand new UK bass album by Sherwood & Pinch, Man Vs. Sofa, at the bottom of this post right now. But instead you’re here, reading this, like a sucker. It’s as if, rather than walking directly through the entrance to a massive party, you paused to listen to a guy in a ratty sweater who was standing by the door shouting about how much fun he had inside.

Sherwood is Adrian Sherwood, the English record producer and dub adventurer I interviewed for DM last summer, during the all-too-brief period when it was possible for me to feel smug about Brexit. The music on his second LP with the Bristol dubstep artist Pinch gets its science-fiction quality by superimposing claustrophobia on a wide-open dub soundscape: it gives you the experiences of contraction and expansion at once, like a spacesuit or a TARDIS.
 

 
However you interpret the title, couch-lock is not the vibe. It’s late-night, clenched-jaw music. You could, perhaps, bathe your mind all day in the jazz chords resonating in Martin Duffy’s piano on “Midnight Mindset,” if they did not hang over beats the press materials describe as “technoid, insectoid and paranoid.”

Sherwood’s longtime collaborator Skip McDonald, who played guitar in the Sugarhill Gang before he joined Mark Stewart’s band and founded Tackhead, is on here. Lee “Scratch” Perry appears on “Lies” to matter-of-factly inform the world’s liars of their damnation, as serenely as a postman delivers a disconnection notice. The London rapper Taz turns up on the last track, “Gun Law.” And is that Buckminster Fuller talking about infinity and self-deprogramming on “Unlearn”?

Of particular interest to the DM reader is the Sherwood & Pinch remake of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s theme from Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, the 1983 film starring David Bowie as a British officer in a Japanese prisoner of war camp, which enters unexplored territory. (My friend from German Army recognized the tune immediately when we were listening to Man Vs. Sofa in his car yesterday.)

Have a listen, after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Oliver Hall
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02.21.2017
09:03 am
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Dub visionary Adrian Sherwood talks about his legendary career in music
06.30.2016
08:54 am
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The ongoing series of Sherwood at the Controls releases surveys the recording career of Adrian Sherwood, the visionary dub producer and founder of On-U Sound. Volume One, released last year, covers 1979 to 1984, while the brand-new Volume Two takes us from 1985 to 1990.

As these discs demonstrate, Sherwood’s talents were too great to be contained by any genre. During the decade-long period under examination, his work connects everyone from Prince Far I, Lee “Scratch” Perry, and the Slits to Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, and Ministry. (“Al [Jourgensen] would go to the toilet and copy down the studio settings Adrian used for his effects on toilet paper and put them in his trousers,” Revolting Cock Luc Van Acker remembers from the Twitch sessions.) As I mention below, I think On-U must be the only point at which the discographies of Sugar Hill and Crass Records intersect. These comps also contain a sampling of the pathbreaking records Sherwood made with On-U outfits African Head Charge, Tackhead, and Dub Syndicate, which redefined what dub was and could be.

I spoke to Sherwood on June 24, the day after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union.

Dangerous Minds: I spent yesterday listening to Don’t Call Us Immigrants as I was watching the Brexit votes come in

Adrian Sherwood: [laughs]

—I feel I have to ask you about that. What are your thoughts?

Well, we would like to have stayed. There’s lots of reasons I would stay in Europe, and I’m sad, really. Europe’s done a lot, really, for each other. Apart from keeping a lot of peace and stability, the farming lobby in France and the farming lobby in Italy’s very strong, Germany’s got the biggest Green Party membership in Europe, they’re very advanced in renewable energy, and the farming lobby makes sure that we’re not victim of any of the terrible things that happen in the States with the poisoning of the food chain. So they’re very, very good; they ensure the standard of organic food, et cetera et cetera, and they also fight for workers’ rights. So I could go on and on about it, but I firmly would have liked to have seen a strong EU that we were part of.

You know, if they’re worried about immigration, they could have a united policy, but it was all panic, panic, panic, and to be honest with you, it was more like the ignorant masses that wanted to get out, thinking “Oh, let’s stop immigration,” but there’s no such thing as an indigenous English person. Every last person in this country is of an immigrant extraction. Everybody.
 

Lee Perry and Adrian Sherwood, photographed by Kishi Yamamoto
 
I wonder if I could go back to the beginning of your career. What was the relationship like between the Jamaican roots artists and the UK scene? It seems like you were in a special position to observe their interaction. Was that a competitive relationship?

No, not in the least. It was very hard for the English artists to get credibility, because everybody was looking to Jamaica, as though there’s the great thing, like the British bands always looking to the great American bands. The situation was always the exciting new star coming from Jamaica, and everybody really wanted to see him or her—mainly males, but a lot of female artists as well—and people didn’t think they could get the sound. So it took quite a long time for the English… you know, that album Don’t Call Us Immigrants, it’s interesting that you mention that, ‘cause I’m proud of that album. But that reflected the development of the English reggae sound.

We developed a sound of our own in England, with bands like Steel Pulse and Aswad and Creation Rebel, et cetera, and, you know, Black Slate, Dennis Bovell, obviously, and then eventually the lovers rock scene and our own dub scene. But Jamaica led the way, so everybody in England was like “Oh wow, here’s the new hip hero coming from Jamaica.” It wasn’t really like competing as such, it was more “Bring on the new star,” really, and everyone in England was keen to see the new star. And a few of the really good bands in England got to back the stars, like Aswad did one of the most famous ever gigs backing a young Burning Spear in ‘76 or ‘77 or something.

Since you mentioned Creation Rebel, can you tell me a bit about Prince Far I? I’ve listened to a lot of Prince Far I but I have almost no sense of what he was like as a person.

Far I was a bit of a joker. He would stand on the table and do Elvis Presley impersonations. He had a very mad sense of humor. But his background was quite serious. He was friends with Claudie Massop who was a political gunman, and he himself had been like a security man at Joe Gibbs’ studio, the doorman. He’d worked on a bauxite factory, producing aluminum, where Claudie Massop was the foreman, and because of the politics, he was like a “big friend,” as Joe Higgs said, like a big friend to Far I. But Far I was a character, quite a complex character as well. He looked much older and seemed much older than he actually was.

Did he seem like a wise person? Was that part of it?

Yeah, he definitely had a lot of depth to him, was interested in things and read quite a bit. But he was a joker and a character, and I remember him being full of jokes and fun and stuff. Although he had a darker side as well, which was more one of feeling that people were working voodoo on him, y’know, things like that. So there was kind of a strange underbelly there as well.

From the little I know, it seems like the reality was pretty heavy for a lot of those guys. Tapper Zukie was involved in some violence… it seems like that was just part of life for a lot of those guys.

Well, I knew Tapper Zukie from that period. My friend, Clem Bushay, he lives about 200 meters from me; he actually produced the Man Ah Warrior album.

No way.

Yeah, the producer lives on the same road as I’m speaking to you from now. I knew Tapper Zukie for a long time.

They were all affiliated with politics, that was the thing. And in the seventies, in Jamaica, obviously, the CIA were moving in, trying to destabilize the country, because they didn’t want them to slip towards the Cuban model and affiliate with Russia, and have another Russian ally so close to the United States. So a lot of arms were put in to Seaga, who was affiliated with the Americans, where Manley wanted to stay with the Cubans and work more to a socialist state. That’s why there’s so many arms and, to this day, so much trouble for Jamaica.

It was a crazy election—I think it was ‘76—and I was eighteen at the time, and Far I was with us in England. It was mad. Phoning home and, you know, ten, 20 people shot a day in the political violence. And Far I obviously was close with Claudie Massop, who was one of the main enforcers, like his father Jack Massop had been. But we met a lot of those gunmen: Take Life[?], Bucky Marshall, Tapper Zukie, Horsie—not Horsemouth Wallace, another one called Horsie. Were some quite dark characters, really, but if you met them, you’d have thought they were really charming. But then what they actually got up to was a whole different thing.
 
Continues after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Oliver Hall
|
06.30.2016
08:54 am
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On-U Sound presents a previously unreleased Adrian Sherwood dub track: A DM premiere
06.02.2016
12:12 pm
Topics:
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Adrian Sherwood c. 1987
 
Legendary English dub producer Adrian Sherwood and his On-U Sound label are getting ready to release the second volume of the career-spanning Sherwood at the Controls compilation. Devoid of filler, both of these beauties are “no duh” purchases for the discerning consumer: you get Sherwood’s masterful manipulations of time and space and a sampling of some of the most interesting underground musicians from the time period under examination.

The new disc, covering 1985 to 1990, collects Sherwood’s remixes of and collaborations with—among others—Mark Stewart of the Pop Group, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Flux (formerly Flux of Pink Indians), Tackhead, KMFDM, Ministry, the Beatnigs, and—On-U’s psychedelic dub outfit whose records are always blaring in my office—African Head Charge. (Volume One, released last year, covered 1979 to 1984 with tracks from Prince Far I, the Fall, the Slits, Annie Anxiety, Shriekback et al.)
 

 
As a taste of the delights that await you on Volume Two, we’ve got an unreleased dub of Bim Sherman’s “Haunting Ground.” Sherman, an early member of the On-U Sound crew, lent his otherworldly voice to records by New Age Steppers, Dub Syndicate, and Jah Wobble. Tessa Pollitt of the Slits credits him as an inspiration:

...I loved what he was doing with Adrian Sherwood. I used to listen to him again and again and again. Tracks like “My Whole World,” “Love Forever” and “Revolution/World Of Dispensation”: I listened to the purity of that music all the time, or more specifically, what attracted me was the purity which was so evident in Bim Sherman’s voice.



Adrian Sherwood and Bim Sherman
 
And here are Sherwood’s notes on the track from the liners of Volume Two:

Bim had started his Century label and had a house a few hundred yards from Southern Studios, near the police station in Wood Green. I originally recorded this for On-U Sound but gave him the vocal to use on his album. That’s Style Scott on drums, and I’m fairly sure it’s Crucial Tony on guitar.

More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Oliver Hall
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06.02.2016
12:12 pm
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100 mins of Adrian Sherwood’s best dub productions
05.09.2012
09:11 pm
Topics:
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image
 
Dub fans and post-punks take note: Glasgow’s Optimo dj team/production unit have just put out another of their excellent podcasts, and this time it’s a whole hundred minutes of the best and most spaced out dub productions by Adrian Sherwood.

According to JD Twitch, who compiled the mix and skillfully blended the tracks together, it “covers music from the years 1979 - 88 and focuses on Adrian Sherwood’s dubwise productions, most of which were released on his ON U Sound label.”

Twitch also interviewed Sherwood after a recent gig in Glasgow, and the dub maestro talks at length about his introduction to reggae and dub music, and to djing, production and running labels:

How old were you when you were working for and running labels, Carib Gems and Hit Run?

I used to go to a reggae club in the town where I lived called the Newlands Club or the Twilight Club. I think Dave Rodigan did his first ever gig there. I was DJing there when I was really young. The owner of the club, a Jamaican guy, was like my dad. He looked after me. My dad had died when I was very young and I had a step-dad but I wasn’t close to him so this guy took me under his wing and I started DJing in there when I was at school, on Saturday afternoons… Then eventually Sunday afternoons and then moved up to doing the early evening stints. I worked there with Emperor Rosco a couple of times and lots of other Radio 1 DJs and Judge Dread, who came down and did a PA in the club. I used to play early evenings before the sound systems. It had been a funk a soul club… Then in around 72 or 73 or something, it was a really, really hot summer and no-one was going to the club for months. The only people going were the reggae fans. It suddenly just turned into this reggae club whereas it had been a lot of soul drinkers prior to 72 or 73… So it went from a group of people who drank a lot and listened to soul to a group of reggae fans who would only want to drink one beer and smoke lots of weed. So it was only a matter of time before the club went bust. I was doing it from the age of 13 – 15, then the club went under. I had became good friends with the owner and his wife so when the club went under the owner, who had previously ran Pama Records, restarted the label and I got a little job doing promotions for them. Then we started our own distribution company out of the Pama office. That pre-dates Jet Star, Jet Star started after we had left. They basically copied the model we had created.

Do you think any of the music on your early labels will ever get re-issued?

There was a bootleg a couple of years ago of a Carol Kalphat record. That was a fucking character! I had to send a message asking not to bootleg any more of my tunes. The real problem with releasing that stuff is that if I start re-issuing it begins to bring people out of the woodwork which isn’t always worth it. I think it’s actually better that they are there and available as collector’s items and that’s it.

If you are new to Sherwood and ON U Sound, then that interview (on the Racket Racket site) is a good place to start, as is this mix. Even if you’re not it’s well worth checking out: just over 100 minutes of non-stop, heavy, psychedelic dub, the perfect soundtrack to an evening in relaxing. Or tripping out.

As usual, Optimo have withheld the tracklist, and have promised to follow up this podcast with another focusing on Sherwood’s more dance-based productions from the late 80s and the 90s. That will be called part one, and here, confusingly, is part two:
 

   Optimo Podcast 12 - Adrian Sherwood On U Sound mix part 2 (dub) by JD Twitch
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Don’t call it ambient: Optimo Fact 214 Mix

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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05.09.2012
09:11 pm
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Adrian Sherwood keeping the fires burning: 30 years of On-U Sound
12.20.2010
02:41 am
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After 30 years of pioneering the UK dub scene, with forays into industrial music, and collaborating with artists like the eternally youthful Lee “Scratch” Perry and Skip McDonald, producer and founder of On-U Sound records, Adrian Sherwood, shows no signs of losing his passion. The man is still on a mission to reggaefy the planet.

To mark the label’s 30th anniversary in 2011, we will be reissuing a number of classic On-U Sound albums, a selection of new releases, renewed live activity and the release of an extensive box-set. The year of celebration begins in early March with the release of a new African Head Charge album and 3 classic reissues – New Age Steppers debut, Creation Rebel’s highly influential Starship Africa and African Head Charge’s hard-to-find Off The Beaten Track.

The plan will then be to release further new albums and classic reissues throughout 2011. The new releases planned include a collection of contemporary remixes of Lee Perry’s On-U Sound output, the long-awaited On-U produced Little Axe album and a New Age Steppers long-player – their first since Foundation Steppers in 1983 – featuring vocal contributions from the late Ari Up and Mark Stewart amongst others. Details of further new releases will be announced shortly.

Amongst the classic reissues are albums from some of the label’s most acclaimed artists including Lee Perry, Dub Syndicate, Bim Sherman, Tackhead, Little Annie and Singers & Players. There are also plans for a deluxe box-set which will include extensive sleeve-notes from Adrian Sherwood, rare and un-released tracks from the archive, a collection of classic tracks and a selection of some of Adrian’s finest remixes.

In this interview with Zwarte Jas, Adrian discusses his upcoming projects and the reggae/punk/rap connection and its political relevance in Britain.

The brief clips of Lee Perry performing demand to be seen in full. So far, I’m coming up snake eyes.
 

 
Via Tackhead

 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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12.20.2010
02:41 am
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