Catching The Waves

I want top rankin'

And so to the home of reggae: Sweden. Specifically, to Uppsala, the heartbeat of Scandinavia's reggae community, home to the massive Uppsala Reggae Festival and, far more importantly, birthplace of one Joel Eriksson - who prefers to be known as Doobie. In All Kinda Wall, this non-Techno Viking* has produced an album that should appeal to fans of 70s/80s-style traditional reggae, and which has already appealed to the listeners of the Portuguese ZonaReGGae radio show, who voted it the best roots revival album of 2009.

Over the past four years, Doobie has collaborated online with many different vocalists and wound up with 14 tracks that explore lightweight topics such as religion, politics, violence, social inequality, drugs (in short, Babylon), all addressed in a forthright and confrontational manner. Fortunately, the songs will also have your ears bobbing blissfully on a sea of dub, although I must point out that some of the tracks, particularly the vocals, seem to be mastered at quite a high volume. Even more fortunately for those who would rather not listen to the lyrics, there will be a chance for you to straighten your bowties and enjoy the instrumentals, the whole instrumentals and nothing but the instrumentals. Explanation at the end of the review.

At this point I'd like to slap an mp3 in your hand to justify my choice of album, but Dubkey, the sp(l)iffing netlabel responsible for All Kinda Wall's distribution, doesn't provide anything so old-fashioned as plain old sounds. No, it's time for an exceptionally violent video hosted at Myspace.

WARNING: This video features real and graphic violence from war footage. Watch at your own risk. If you don't want to watch Amsie Brown - Check Out, you'll have to settle for the zipped album at the end of this post.

The artists on All Kinda Wall advocate Jah and peace (note Haji Mike's dub poem, Bless) but aren't reluctant to engage with specific topics such as Palestine (New Zion by Hanouneh); the role of parenting in society today (Iyah Lazer's The Future Of Our Nation); pharmaceutical abuse (Leave Those Drugs Alone by Jah Zebi) and, in Dan I Locks's Friend In Weed, the joys of ganja, making a case for its religious role in Jah, its therapeutical benefits, and its subsequent decriminalisation: "A friend in weed is a friend indeed".

The relationship between the music and its message is strikingly paradoxical: traditional reggae is probably the most conservative of musical genres, yet the philosophy is liberal, even cleaving to libertarianism in places. Walk around the planet and you'll end up where you started.

Doobie is to  be complimented in his use of software to recreate the feel of thirty-year-old reggae and his use of the net to gather a roster of artists - who says computer music is impersonal? I'm even more impressed with the way he has bedded the vocals into his riddims. Of course, I speak from experience (and an ivory tower) because I've heard the instrumentals. You can, too, because Dubkey have released All Kinda Riddims, for those music lovers who don't care for the vocals. The new album cover will make Photoshop fans smile:

If you enjoy All Kinda Wall/Riddims, (and I did) please consider sending a "thank you" email to DoobieSounds and/or Dubkey. Both albums are issued under a Creative Commons licence, meaning that you can share them with your friends however you like, although it might be best if you all sat on the floor in a circle and passed a burned CD around until everyone has had their fill. Just don't hog it.

DoobieSounds - All Kinda Wall (link to zipped album)

DoobieSounds - All Kinda Riddims (ditto)

Dubkey

*Skål!

 

 

 

My life is not my own

I'll make this not-quite-brief. It has been touching to receive so many kind-hearted and encouraging comments from music fans and stalwarts of the CC netaudio world, so much so that I have decided to continue Catching The Waves, although in a reduced capacity due to my irritatingly fragile health and my exasperatingly robust laziness. If none of you object, I shall post reviews and articles rather less frequently than before, and I will continue to recommend other legitimate free music sites in the devout hope that CTW will finally, once and for all, become superfluous to your music needs.

Thank you to each and every one of you for making the effort to post a comment, tweet a tweet, or write an email. Such interaction, to use a rather dull word to describe such a happy experience, came as an unexpected and welcome surprise. Please feel free to drop in at anytime and let me know what you think (good or bad) of the blog, or if you simply want to complain about the level of the euro, the weather or my grammar. I will endeavour to respond either in the comments section itself or via a new post.

(By the way, this being the internet, I am duty bound to point out that my choice of illustration does not reflect any political leanings but was merely an opportunity for a giggle. I remind you of the web's informal motto: "The Internet - Promoting Ignorance Since 1985".)

Before I go, I feel I must respond to a couple of the comments:

Embe, thank you for your suggestion about writing for the lovely and cuddly Phlow. During the last couple of years, I have had a number of undeserved but very flattering requests to write for other websites, all of which are much better than crumby old CTW. To my regret, I have had to turn them down because I am an unreliable individual and I would hate to damage the reputation of any of the (now numerous) estimable CC music sites, including Mo's marvellous website, by missing deadlines or not being able to write anything comprehensible.

Additionally, though I have been shocked by some of the extraordinarily nice things that my cuddlesome readers have said about CTW (though note with disappointment the paucity of offers of sex or money or money for sex), quite the most outré sentiment in the comments section came from David McMahon. Mr McMahon is obviously a devotee of Jane Austen, for his message was in the finest tradition of that peerless stylist:

I jizzed in my pants when I checked my email and I saw a new email from my subscription to CTW.

Well said, David, well said. World, you can keep the Booker. Don't bother with the Pulitzer. Stuff the Nobel. Catching The Waves will make you jizz your pants.

Revival or revolver

Photo: lakewentworth

It might have come to your attention that health and time issues have delivered a steel toe-cap to CTW's love-plumbing. The only thing to do is to turn around and hope that the same toe-cap will add momentum to this dead blog by administering a swift kick to the nethers.

So... to gauge whether the enormous, brian-bursting* effort to maintain CTW is worth it, I am asking you, my insane fans, if you want me to carry on getting my fingernails dirty. To do so, please do one or all of the following:

1. Leave a comment at CTW
2. Tweet the tag #ctw
3. Send me a private email declaring your undying love

If enough of you wasters respond, I might - might - plant CTW's flagpole in the internet's soft, pliant earth. Yeah, baby.

If not, thank you so much for everything and have a great life, you wonderful people. Take care.

*This typo is so good that I'm keeping it.