2023 Charity Shop Purchases #87 Asian Dub Foundation - Community Music
The Kinder Handl charity shop on Glasgow's Battlefield Road has literally hundreds of CDs. I spent about half an hour last Tuesday going through them and only came away with two - Friday's Ska is the Limit compilation and this one.
From 2000 on the FFRR label Community Music is the 4th album by Asian Dub Foundation and joins 1998's Rafi's Revenge and 2003's Enemy of the Enemy on the shelves. And what a worthy edition it is too.
The NME describes it as the least laissez-faire album since Public Enemy’s ‘Fear Of A Black Planet’, ‘Community Music’ is not remotely market-honed but has a street power and rock’n’roll energy that nothing else is going to measure up to this year. They go on to award the album with a score of 10/10
Pitchfork gives it a well deserved score of 8.7 commenting as much musically innovative as they are politically active, Asian Dub Foundation's sound is a melting pot of jungly breakbeats, dub and dancehall flavours, and snaky guitar lines that morph from rock riffs into Indian sitars and back again, every element of which manages to stand out in the mix as often as it complements the others.
Chris Grimshaw from AllMusic commented that Community Music should be in every thinking person's collection, directly between the Clash and Public Enemy. High praise indeed and probably merited
A powerful album with some powerful messages and a good find.
I am extremely surprised you like this.
ReplyDeleteI'm full of surprises!
Deleteso you'll be wanting a copy of Stand Up by Jethro Tull?
DeleteI see that there's a best of Milli Vanilli just released
DeleteStop winding him up George! Stand Up is a great album - he just hasn't realised it yet - some things (unaccountably) take time with certain people.
DeleteA wonderful record. Swc.
ReplyDelete