Japanese Dub

According to Jah Wobble, Japanese music is “a million zillion miles away” from the Cantonese tunes that featured on his acclaimed Chinese Dub album. Some listeners may consider adding extra zeros to that distance. From the first track, ‘Shinto Dub’, which begins with the percussionist Joji Hirota's martial yelps and ends with a disorientating metallic drone, this is a deliberately unsettling experience. Yet it is based upon two Japanese concepts that feature frequently in non-Japanese arts: Ma (the space between the notes) and Jo-ha-kyu (a slow, fast, sudden stop). Inspired by the writer Yukio Mishima, the film-maker Akira Kurosawa and the final act of Apocalypse Now, Wobble has sculpted a dynamic tale that develops and increases intensity over 11 songs before tipping the listener into silence at its climax. Where Chinese Dub used florid melodies, its sequel rationalises and reduces, a Japanese cultural habit that bears comparison with Jamaican dub (particularly on ‘K Dub S’ and ‘K Dub 10, where echo bleeds into the spaces).

There is much more than unadorned bass-playing, however. ‘Kokiriko’ is a melody that you might find in Irish music; ‘Cherry Blossom of my Youth’ and ‘Hokkai Bon Uta’ are classical melodies; while an evocative shakuhachi floats like blue smoke on ‘Ma’. On ‘Taiko Dub’, Hirota (best known for his work with Real World alumni Trisan) takes centre stage. Since Chinese Dub, Wobble has been on a roll (with an autobiography, a World Cup song, and a movie under his belt). Where next?