Dub Syndicate Personally, I've always considered it a sad professional failing for the authors of album sleevenotes to inject any hint of subjectivity into their work......... When "On the Wire" launched on BBC Radio Lancashire on Sunday 16 September 1984 its first guests were Adrian Sherwood and Keith LeBlanc, its adopted theme tune, and therefore the first tune to be heard on the show, was a remix of the yet to be unleashed "Ravi Shankar Pt.1". "Tunes from the missing Channel" was originally released in June 1985, ostensibly as the follow-up to two previous Dub Syndicate outings. Firstly 1982's "Pounding System", sub-titled "ambience in dub"! and whose titles were piss-takes of the then current Prince Jammy "zombie space invaders versus voodoo ninja footballers" style albums coming through on the Greensleeves label. Followed by 1983's largely experimental "One way system", released on cassette only format in the States but then seeing unofficial CD release in Europe in the early nineties (remarkable for achieving a listing in the Sunday Times best-of-the-year round-up, this sort of recognition having been something of a rarity for an On U product).
Tunes From The Missing Channel
However "Tunes", as we shall refer to the album from here on in, was not so much a follow up but more of an initiation of a whole new genre, for what we now know today as "new roots" can track its modern development back to this album as its source. From the late seventies Sherwood had ploughed a lonely furrow, with only the likes of the underground Shaka, Dennis Bovell and Neal Fraser a.k.a. the Mad Professor vaguely approaching similar work. Dub Syndicate was, and still is, a conglomerate formed around the drums of Jamaican Style Scott and producer Adrian Sherwood. As the drummer for Roots Radics Scotty's link with Sherwood was forged via their mutual work and friendship with Prince Far I - and therefore the "correct reggae pedigree" for On U productions should have been assured. This cut no ice with the critical mass of the London based press corps who at the time had no time for reggae, let alone UK productions.
The routine for Dub Syndicate albums was that Scotty drove out the rhythms in Kingston and Sherwood manipulated the finished product in London. What was different about "Tunes" though was the discovery of some new technology, its use and abuse. Whilst in Switzerland working with Marc Hollander, of Aksak Maboul fame, Sherwood together with partner and keyboard-player Kishi Yamamoto discovered an emulator for the first time - hence the delight in pulling the sitar sound from the keyboard which resulted in the almost prosaically titled "Ravi Shankar Pt.1" (because it was!) Also, before sampling had a name, Sherwood stumbled upon the technique of what he called "captured sound" by utilising the locking function in the AMS digital harmoniser. No need to bleed all over the tape deck a la Double D & Steinski as a result of razored edits, instead you just invoke Emperor Rosko (the album's Fats Comet) via machine triggers to appear in "The show is coming".
And so in "Tunes" we have the earliest manifestation of the use of the kind of technology which is today commonplace in the production of the new roots reggae/dub all over the world. But the album, with its mad splashes of sound and out-of-time beats remains uniquely an On U Sound/Sherwood creation. The collaborative nature of the enterprise brought together ex-PIL playmates Wobble and Levene in addition to members of African Head Charge and Creation Rebel, the sweet crooning of Bim Sherman and the apparently game for anything Steve Beresford. The result was the grouping of tracks that eventually became "Tunes", one of the best-selling albums in the entire On U catalogue, re-pressed here on CD for the first time and re-mastered from the original mix-down masters. It would not do justice to "Tunes" to say that it sounds as fresh today as it did back in 1984 because for most people either their ears were just not ready.
Steve Barker - On the Wire
July 1997
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