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ari up
forGet MASh-UpS,
theSe two pUnKS
pioneereD the Art of
DUB-UpS!
For 30 years, the crashing kick drum and echo chamber squelch
of dub have served as a shibboleth for avant-garde pop music–
the banner under which leftist British punks, New York rappers,
underground electronic producers and Jamaican soul rebels
have united. In London at the dawn of the 1980s, Ariane “Ari
Up” Forster found in dub reggae the seemingly limitless possibilities
for cultural rejection that she had first experienced in
The Slits, the groundbreaking punk band she fronted as a teen.
Ari, who had toured opening for The Clash before even turning
16, proceeded to delve head first into reggae, first by aiming
The Slits in that direction, finally by escaping Thatcher and
Reagan in the streets of Jamaica and the jungles of Belize.
Across the Atlantic, Keith LeBlanc was living, and beginning to
reject, his own success story: as drummer and percussionist with
Sugar Hill Records’ house band, LeBlanc pounded studio skins for
such proto-rap hitmakers as Sugar Hill Gang and Grandmaster
Flash. But it was in dub’s studio freedom that LeBlanc–under
collaborative guises such as Tackhead and Interference and
with partners such as On-U honcho Adrian Sherwood and rapper
Melle Mel–found his calling. (On-U serves as the common
ground between Ari Up, one-time singer for Sherwood’s New
Age Steppers, and LeBlanc.)
Now, with popular music looking more and more towards that
crucial dub intersection–where punk’s snarl meets hip-hop’s bravado,
where funk’s slither slams against electro’s shiver–former
On-U label manager Nicolai Beverungen’s Collision label steps
up to remind us who went there first. Stop The Confusion (Global
album
reviews
10.05
Ari Up
DreAD More DAn DeAD
Collision/GER/CD
Keith LeBLAnc
Stop the confUSion (GLoBAL
interference)
Collision/GER/CD
Interference), a collection of some of Keith LeBlanc’s finest robotic
funk dubs, and Dread More Dan Dead, a new set of dub-inspired
punky dancehall cuts from Ari Up, hit the zeitgeist square on
the jaw with time-tested knowledge. Because if M.I.A.’s beatobsessed
urban Brit mélange and partner Diplo’s world-bounce
fusion have immediate precursors, they’re Ari Up and On-U
Sound. Similarly, the punk-dubbed shock of LCD Soundsystem
and The Juan MacLean’s meandering electro pulse find common
ground in LeBlanc’s hymnal–in fact, every neo-dancehall beat
and sample-filled percussive culture clash could be compared, on
some level, to Ari and Keith.
On Dread More Dan Dead, Ari Up–known to the Kingston
scene she frequents as Madussa for her thick, chaotic
dreads–proves herself a more than capable deejay, toasting
on such atypical reggae topics as monogamy. But it’s her
signature falsetto quiver and the album’s deep digital beats
that provide Dread highlights such as “True Warrior” and the
gender-role reversal “Young Boy.”
LeBlanc’s collection, Stop The Confusion, compiles KLB
tracks from across the spectrum of his career–from jazzy
drum workouts (“Whatever”) to his better-known sampleheavy
industrial collisions (“Technology Works”), from visionary
mechanized dubs (“Tackhead Dub”) to straighter soulful
cuts (“Green Theory”). This is no greatest hits, nor is it a completists-only
affair; rather, it’s a map to the place LeBlanc’s
sound holds in the modern-music lineage–one which proves
vital. Justin Hopper
93