i returned to music through machines. the difference is that the machines are clean, and the machines are not corrupted. what i create here cannot hurt people, but you can bring an impure musician to play in your studio and create your own doom. my brain represent the bass, an’ if an evil man is playing on my brain, it’ll cause me trouble as he’s trying to chip away at my brain. and if an evil drummer is playing my beat with an evil thought, i think he can hurt my brain by playing a dreadful drum. but the machine cannot play a dreadful drum, and the machine cannot play a dreadful bass.
said lee scratch perry.
the kinda quote that could neatly summarise the whole dub experience for some. y’know psychedelic machine music orchestrated by brain-addled alchemists. a goofy science peddled by wonky / scary fellas in a murky smoke-filled lab. a sound dripping with mental vagaries and plumes of weed reek.
but then he’ll wheeze out something like:
i’m a miracle man, things happen which i don’t plan, i’ve never planned anything. whatsoever i do, i want it to be an instant action object, instant reaction subject. instant input, instant output.
which makes him sound less like a paranoid man-mental and more like derek bailey…
anyway getting to the subject at hand, proper eats (a titular semi-homage to the slightly loopy lee perry record, roast fish collie weed and corn bread) by we like cats chows down on the best parts of both these philosophies. offering up a right old smorgasbord of food, dub and felines. a semi-lucid dream of cats, space cats, basketball cats, fine home cooking and high-quality local/organic/sustainable restaurants, lee perry, king tubby, malcom mclaren, horace andy, sister nancy, augustus pablo, alpha & omega, sade & rob walmart
yeah the press release reads like a hipster piss-take (the perfect music for your next vegan pot luck or cat dance party, or for totally chillin’ with your favorite feline companion after yoga practice!). ever so slightly tongue in cheek one imagines. it’s a record that’s quite light and oddball and goddamn a bit fun, more of a psych-tinged and outward looking beast, rather than the oppressive, gruff, grubby, sweaty male shiz i’m used to. a record that could happily sit amongst the baked doyens of the not not fun label.
and despite the skirting-with-ridiculousness concept underpinning it – y’know the peculiar cats/basketball/food bent (rainbow slam dunks, cats that are hungry for pineapple meat…) – it’s a record clearly in love with the dub.
recorded on two sizzlingly hot summer days, tapes buried in dirt through the rainy season, properly saturated with the deepest filth of soul fire dub juice, cooked in an oven on low heat, strung back up in the studio, versioned, dubbed and mastered for thickest possible vibrations. and now it’s here for yr aural delectation.
i spoke to the parties involved – adam forkner (beats, airhorns), honey owens (voice, keyboards, visions quests) and eva salens (voice, keyboard, samples).
adam: all of this happened quite spontaneously last summer. honey and eva approached me to record a “reggae record” for them at marriage studio where i engineer. we just set up and recorded for two days. i made some beats, they laid down the vox, keyboards and various devices. we did most of it live improvised. it was really natural. we have all played music with each other in the past, so it was surprisingly comfortable to do. we all just sank into working together quite naturally.
which is how it sounds from speakers to ears. full of blissed-out lazy sunshine vibes and half asleep in park staring at cloud shapes zonked on whatever yr endorphins of choice are hypnagogia. hell, this is a great summer record (course it’s positively vomiting rain here just now). playful. which i s’pose is kinda unusual given their generally more serious day-jobs: forkner as white rainbow, owens as valet, saelens as inca ore.
so why dub?
adam: because reggae can be fun and joyous and i think we were all wanting to make something less serious as people tend to take our solo stuff. its great to share the music making with friends, reggae is a universal. it let us work with a certain loose theme in mind so we didn’t have to be stuck in our solo artists’ heads. and it’s a big influence on me in terms of production, vibe, culture, remix, versions, re-use and recycling of beats, sound systems, echo, synths, psychedelia, funkiness…
eva: soul shine is powerful in dub music. it’s a genre that gives the permission to give out so much soul radiance, without too much self-seriousness. i liked rewriting my creativity within the dub music vibe.
honey: i agree with adam and eva..it’s true there is a warm, streaming of pure light/love that shines on the heart and skin. a jah sweater that wraps around you when u hear the beats and feel the dubs. dub feels like a natural progression when dealing with electronics. king tubby is a major influence on these feelings. when i was young and living in sf in the early 90′s, i worked at this co-op, rainbow grocery. i met these rad dj’s/musicians who turned me onto dub, on-u sound system, african head charge but at the same time, miles davis and the orb. i nursed on these mixtapes that were handed down to me, rode in their dub cars to their nite of jamaican oldies and learned the ways.. it’s definitely a mediation, a scripture, a portal to relaxation and understanding, praise and rejoicing the good feelings. also, it’s just plain old trips that i like about it.
and why cats?
eva: the cat influence wasn’t premeditated, it just emerged from improvisations. honey and i cavorted like kitties over the beats, playing keyboards like we had playful paws. i am influenced by animals and their weirdness, way more than the beatles or some common musical touchstone.
like a kindof animus lee perry thing, dub is the ghost in him coming out, ‘cept with felines i suppose. what’s clear is that goofing aside, all three clearly dig the genre. so what draws them to it?
eva: it’s loose. eccentric characters and producers abound. dub bucks off the droll influences of self-conscious euro musicality. so much music just seems unneccessarily straight-laced. when i am having a dub dance session, i feel like i embody a character who is not all wrapped up in babylon worry mind – instead, grooving on an eternal hip pop.
it’s a fine concoction of old and new, a blend of anachronisms that (reductionally) dates back to the adam and steve of dub’s genesis – lee perry, king tubby – using old machines and new tech, blurring science and magic and art, using the studio as an instrument. it sounds playfully modern and decades ancient at the same time. a studio record, cooked down like an ital stew, playing around and trusting every idea, says eva
honey: the studio is important on the level of feeling the sounds through the speakers. it needs to boom and echo in the room. not only sit in the stereo field of a headphone mix. also, i really like the improvisations that going to different studios have. the marriage studio is a great place to make a dub record because it’s underground like the lee perry tapes : ) also, there are a zillion rob walmart keyboards lying around ready to be thrown in the mix.
that the three would be drawn to dub is hardly surprising given their previous work. and i hear (or imagine anyway) bits of it in bits of some of all their records. seem to remember picking up on ruff ridin from the last inca ore album and nudge and rob walmart. maybe just the processing changes – more echo, more reverb, more air horn. but it’s still vibrations and layers and explorations and electrickery, sonic sleight of hand. carving out four dimensions from sound and silence and what’s inbetween. loping around the dense syrup and hazy soup of broken beats and mumblemouthed vocals.
consider all three as the cats on no ordinary dub that need to scratch things and make some loud noises.
adam: i don’t think its as big of a stretch for us musically as some might think. we all make psychedelic electronic music. dub reggae is psychedelic electronic music. it is mixers and turning knobs and echo..not too far away after all.
and that said, it’s still human, still flesh, still organic. so despite the oniony layers and mixing board complexities, it should transfer from the studio to the joyous sweat blood and tears of the stage.
eva: we did play it live for the first time last week, and it was a success! i equally enjoyed both the live and studio setting, which is rare but that’s how free the whole endeavor is of the babylon stress structure.
my own music over these years has been really stressful to me at times. in a live setting, i am all fretting about mixer knobs and keeping the attention piqued in a quiet room. but when we played our first we like cats show, my concerns were incinerated by the dub beams and rays and i was just smiling and rocking and contributing with fun energy. it was so liberating!
live, adam built the structure of the songs out of some kind of glowing button machine and honey and i contributed our meows and instruments like icing.
honey: yeah, i was surprised at how well both environments work for us. both were completely playful and light hearted. some experiences of group dynamics can be oppressive on the ego and/or logistic level so this was a very refreshing and confirming experience that music bursts forth from the place of love and freedom. i am now truly dedicated to continuing the exploration of this music with these people and others like them.
so an ongoing concern then?
eva: we are concerned that people of our world need to massage their souls with dancing so it is on-going.
aye, soul massages. consider food, consider music, as a communal celebration (or as honey owens puts it: reggae music is the food of the soul). something from the cosmos, for yr outer space and inner space it’s all very *cough* positive. which ain’t something i hear too often…
eva: my strongest influence is exploring the idea of what a human can be creatively by observing and referencing music and behavior before these neutering globalizing forces. listening to 78-era international music is exciting in terms of boundary breaking. observing a cheerful and carnal kitten is inspiring in terms of shaping life force into joyous and abstracted forms.
and these motivational missives from forkner:
my m.o. has always been have open ears. listen to all types of music. see if you can figure out how it was made. taste all the tastes. if you like something, find more things like it. understand the cultures that music spring from. don’t get stuck in one scene. don’t be afraid to seem uncool. keep digging, be honest with your ears, trust your opinions, but let them change on a whim. never stop listening. never stop exploring. search and you will discover wonderful things.
i really only consider myself a musician dedicated to the craft, joy and art of making music as well, as much and as long as i possibly can.
and on that life-affirming note i’ll wrap this rambling up. you can get the proper eats album from marriage records. the vinyl version comes with mp3 download and 4 extended bonus dub versions.
