Dennis Bovell
Sufferer Sounds
(Disciple)
Many London recording studios are underground or under railway lines in arches, down in the earth, where the thrum of heavy traffic vibrates, felt not heard. Maverick producer and artist Dennis Bovell’s studio just south of the River Thames was no exception.
But, unlike the studios in Jamaica that swelter under the sun and that seem to have a direct green connection to the fecund land outside, where it’s possible to plant a bass note and watch a mighty tree grow in a day, with roots that burrow deep down and with a trunk wide enough to take whatever mystic melody that chances upon its branches, the studios in the so-called Motherland tend to have an urban edge to them. Something technological, something aggressive, pushy, in your face and unavoidable.
That’s what you might hear on this collection of mainly dubs and versions created, probably almost in passing, as the restless Dennis Bovell moved modern music along with a few mighty shoves back in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Most of all, this collection is a reminder that this is dancing music. Yes, you can nod away, get lost in the psychedelics but the urgency of the rhythms and the in-the-same-room-ness of the drums affect the body in the same way any irrepressible dance music does.
These dubs arrive in a dirty Luton van and are unloaded into a Victorian church hall or a glass and concrete municipal venue, or someone’s front room in a house on a street in Harlesden, London and they have come to work, to get the people up and stepping, to excite the Saturday night.
