Titled simply Implosion, the new record confirms the importance of the collaboration between Kevin Martin (The Bug) and Michael Fiedler (Ghost Dubs).
Window-rattling throbs, crackle and hiss, and an exquisite sense of how to use negative space push the dub reggae aesthetic into territory where most of its features are, as deconstructionists say, “under erasure”.
While the heartbeat rhythm, dub’s sine qua non, persists, it is sometimes muted to the point where a flatline seems imminent. The genre’s use of echo has been similarly transformed, giving the impression of a space that is simultaneously too vast and too claustrophobic for clear sonic reflections.
Vocals, which are still a crucial component of Lee “Scratch” Perry’s most otherworldly experiments, are entirely absent. Same for the staccato keyboard chords, clipped guitar, and drum fills that conjure visions of the Caribbean.
The tracks on Implosion are so abstract that it is easier to discern the music’s genealogy from what gets left out – that empty quality that has defined the genre since the earliest dub plates – than what stays in.
Part of the reason is that The Bug and Ghost Dubs inhabit a musical No Man’s Land, deeply invested in a tradition from which their heritage and experience inevitably estrange them. Rather than faking roots, as so many white artists have done, they decided to make music that is functionally homeless.
This way of doing things seemed more problematic on Imploded Versions than it does here. Covering a song titled “Militants” three times while draining it of righteous anger, as The Bug did on that earlier EP, is a little perverse.
Implosion, by contrast, does a better job of standing on its own two feet. There’s still a version of “Militants”, and other nods to dub forebears. But the concept works better when freed from self-conscious versioning.
Although Implosion feels coherent when you listen to the album from start to finish, it’s not hard to identify who made a particular track.
As his name suggests, Ghost Dubs stays a little closer to the minimalist post-reggae rhythms of his German predecessors in Basic Channel, Rhythm & Sound, and Pole.
While it’s clear that The Bug has the post-Cold War European dub scene in mind, his contributions incline toward low-end soundscapes in which the beat almost becomes inaudible and is all the more punishing as a consequence.
The difference between these artists gives Implosion a call-and-response quality. It’s like they listened to what their counterpart came up with and said, “Hold my beer.”
What would be the goal of such a competition?
It’s telling that the liner notes for Implosion on Bandcamp are longer than this piece. The difficulty of communicating this album’s reason for being inspires an excess of words in stark contrast with the music’s minimalism. Although Martin and Fiedler’s love of all things dub is sincere, this wordiness suggests defensive prolepsis, trying to head off potential criticism at the pass.
Dub’s spiritual underpinnings pose the biggest problem.
When you are making self-consciously negative music, in both a musical and philosophical sense, the positivity that is fundamental to Rastafarian culture is hard to sustain.
As the liner notes put it, “Implosion is ice-cool, a stark contrast to the warmth and sociability of traditional Jamaican roots and the current trends in digi-dub. Instead, the mood is soaked in tension and intense dread.”
While most people will agree that current trends make such pessimism entirely warranted, the impulse to reflect reality rather than transform it still seems a function of privilege.
To invoke a dread that has nothing to do with hair hits a discordant note. And including a track called “Hope” that offers none is almost cruel.
This is not to take anything away from Implosion’s musical impact. If you love minimal dub and post-cyberpunk soundscapes, the album is bound to please.
Maybe it’s better to think of The Bug and Ghost Dubs’ achievement in cinematic terms.
When I played Implosion for my daughter, who finds most electronic dance music shallow and tedious, she exclaimed, “This I like. It’s like the soundtrack for a horror film.”
The 2006 feature Children of Men comes to mind, with its prominent use of a track by dubstep stalwarts Kode 9 and the Spaceape.
Despite the film’s dystopian premise – a near future in which human beings have become infertile – the story ends up delivering an updated version of the Christian nativity story, all the more powerful for the bleakness surrounding it.
Perhaps there is a theological core to Implosion after all, implicit in the album’s title.
When it seems foolhardy to imagine positive energy radiating outward, it’s better to make like a dying star.
Photograph courtesy of Joel Schalit. All rights reserved.
