Label: M Records Format: CD, LP
The indefatigable Ryan Moore keeps up the Dub pressure with this, his seventh album release as Twilight Circus, purveyor of fine Seventies-styled Dubs to the kids… and beyond. One of the first impressions of Dub Voyage, as is only to be expected, is the bass. Tons of the stuff, and warm, gloopy booms of it; while the LP starts off gently enough, by the conclusion matters have got almost down to the the low-Hertz territories mapped out so boomshakingly by Adrian Sherwood‘s experimental production on The Missing Brazilian‘s fearsomely wobbly Warzone back in 1984 – and re-released not before time a couple of years back on the On-U Sound Master Recordings series. Bathyscapes rather than landscapes.
Anyhow, back to Twilight Circus; and Moore’s production has rarely sounded this crisp – and this is from a geezer who could probably make a biscuit snap cleanly in half a a thousand metres with his echo chambers. The Seventies classics are the obvious influence, with “Wareika” paying homage to the late Augustus Pablo via a melodica paean and some formidable bass acreage, but there’s something indefinably contemporary about the TC sound which takes the template and makes it Moore’s own. Squishy analogue synth lines whip like power cables in a desert storm or gurgle into the undertow, bleeps and whistling abound, electric pianos skank the melody before another wave of boom and beat crashes on the shorefront… such appropriate images on the sleeve, the shaking palm trees, the turbulent pounding of the sea.
It’s around “Blaster” that the heaviness of the bass and the shooting sparks of delay really begin to head offworld, taking themselves and the listener into revolving abstractions, topped off with head-opening frequencies at apposite junctures. The blissful combinations of sweet fragments of melodies are made all the more special for their counterpoint to the drum & bass grooves, as “K2000” proves as it delves deeper and wider into low end on one hand, further out into space with the phased hi-hats and synth slippage on the other. Far-freaking-out just about sums up Dub Voyage, and it’s no ill description that the last track (with a rather neat line in delayed/decayed snare drums fills) is called “Massive”, after all. For that added extra hint of thunder only a needle in the groove and a set of stupendous speakers can give, the vinyl edition also offers DJs and home listeners alike even greater opportunity to fall back onto an almost physical bass presence.
-Linus Tossio-
