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Influences
Get Carter Remix by Jah Wobble - Two new heavyweight versions on a special 10" vinyl recorded by Jah Wobble especially for Pressure Sounds... thunderous new versions of the Get Carter theme by one of the best bass players around. Wobble was the original bass player in the greatest ever incarnation of PIL and has subsequently recorded with everyone from Pharaoh Sanders, Can, Bill Laswell and his own group ‘Invaders of the Heart’.
Available from: www.presure.co.uk
Sounds Like
Jah Wobble - Chinese Dub album out on 19th January, 2008.
It is now available on sale from our website.
Fascinating collusion of East, West and down-deep dub
This could well be one of the greatest things to have come out of Liverpool’s status as Capital Of Culture 2008. Wobble’s commissioned collaboration with a selection of handpicked traditional Chinese musicians came to a wonderful blossoming conclusion with a series of gigs that blended Chinese music with his own hefty dub leanings. This album is the beautiful extrapolation of those unique moments.
The whole thing is fantastic from start to finish but try the traditional Dragon & Phoenix, complete with Eastern instrumentation and a big, big bassline underneath, for a masterclass in not just melding two very diverse cultural and musical developments, but also somehow showing that despite (or because of) the disparity, there’s way, way more in common than you might at first think. Elsewhere, L1 Dub is a splendid piece of Wobblism and Horse Mountain Song, another traditional, is given a tender and tremendous makeover.
This is an album and a project that tells many stories: of its creation, of the weight of history behind the project, the tales of the songs themselves. Culture can have a capital way beyond geographical and stylistic boundaries, and music of this calibre is a rich, eloquent and wonderful expression thereof.
30 Hertz | 30HZ CD 30
Reviewed by Joe Shooman
Record Collector
For me, the highlight was Jah Wobble... just extraordinary. It was musical genius as far as I was concerned
Lopa Kothari, BBC Radio 3’s World on 3 (WOMAD)
Nobody could deny that Jah Wobble's Chinese Dub performance was knockout entertainment. Veteran punk and bass virtuoso Wobble has fruitfully married classical Chinese instrumentation (including his wife, Zi Lan Liao on Chinese zither) to heavy dub rhythms - the music was scintillatingly catchy. Arwa Haider, Metro (WOMAD)
Jah Wobble gave the performance of the festival. His new project, Chinese Dub, started as a relatively modest commission for Liverpool 08, marking the city’s year as European capital of culture, and grew into a tour and an album. Dub and Chinese music proved a perfect mixture. The earnest folk melodies leavened the dub’s conceptual self-importance; the dub hardened the Chinese music against kitsch
David Honigmann, Financial Times (WOMAD)
This valiant attempted fusion of east and west could fall flat on its face, but it proves a remarkable success. This is partly due to Wobble's wife, Zi Lan Liao, who picks out pizzicato patterns on a zither-like guzheng as accompaniment to Mongolian singer Gu Ying Ji and crystalline female vocalist Wanq Jingqi. In the midst of this exoticism, Wobble is a trilby-sporting East End geezer, underpinning the eclectic extravagance with his dub-bass rumble
Ian Gittins, The Guardian (Bush Hall, London)
Throughout July and August 2008, Jah Wobble, legendary bass player and contemporary renaissance man, toured the UK with his new project, Chinese Dub, a 22-piece Anglo-Chinese aural and visual spectacular. Combining his trademark dub with Chinese melodies and instrumentation, the maverick music-maker successfully married East and West sensibilities, proving once again that his creative adventurousness is far removed from others’ world music dilettantism. The tour culminated in an appearance on the BBC Radio 3 stage at WOMAD in what was, for many media commentators and punters alike, the highlight of the festival.
Chinese Dub, a studio album produced by Jah Wobble, includes singers Mongolian/Tibetan Gu Ying Ji and Wang Jingqi, from the Mao ethnic minority of China, part of Yunnan Province (both handpicked by Jah Wobble on a visit to China in 2007), internationally acclaimed guzheng player Zi Lan Liao, flautist Clive Bell, and Wobble himself; the Pagoda Chinese Youth Orchestra also features.
For hundred of years, this secret arts form was only passed down by family and was forbidden to female performers. However, female performers can now be seen on stage as mask change masters. All performers who are chosen to learn this art form have to swear to secrecy before they allow to learn even its basics. It takes them many years of hard practise to master the skill. In China, there are less than 200 artists who are able to perform ‘the mask change’.
Here is a clip of some of those artists. The music accompanying the clip is an example of Jah Wobble's Chinese Dub.
more about the project from BBC News:
BBC news: for Chinese Dub
Pictures courtesy from flickr.com - Hizento, Bogart Cat, Shashamane
I’m sorry but I won’t be accepting ‘friends’. I’m uneasy with the term friend being used as a form of collateral. A friend is someone who you come to know and trust and break bread with and all that. If you think that’s a pathetically old fashioned view that’s ok with me, no problem. It is not my intention to cause offence or anything. I wasn’t even going to have a myspace page but then someone (with the best of intentions) started one using my name without asking. That has the potential to lead to all sorts of problems, so we asked them to stop and then started this page. If you have an interest in my music and what I’m up to then hopefully this page will be of use.
You can visit my official website: 30 Hertz Records for my latest news. Artist credit: for Chinese Dub
If you want to talk about my work, there is a site in myspaceJAH WOBBLE APPRECIATION SOCIETY
Take it easy
Jah Wobble
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