#3263 Fishmans - Night Cruising 2018

Meandering, smoky dub, spiked with Japanese mystery. I don't think I like it, but it's so deliriously, slitheringly strange I can't resist, bass rolling up in slow motion across short syllables reverbed into infinity; all I want to do is eat fish and smoke opium and never wake up 3.5/5

#2712 Moebius and Plank - Rastakraut Pasta

There's this bit in Bob's Burgers where Bob gets into a wine-identifying showdown. The mystery wine turns out to be the spit bucket wine. It's a pretty thin joke to write an entire episode backwards to get to.

This says on the tin that it's Reggae-infused Krautrock, but the Reggae's slowdubbed into oblivion, and the rest is otherwise unspectacular, with shades of Super 16 laziness. The combination's double-dull too-close clashing; xanax and vodka, fries and curly fries, tan and taupe 2.5/5

#2408 Idjut Boys - Versions

Dub's a frustrating space to pin down, kinda know-it-when-I-hear-it.

Something about the specific heady fullness of that bass sound brings the word to my fingers, something about that wave of reverb, absent any real connection to the roots.

But the dub tag goes on here.

But this's more than twoncy 90's headbobbing, it's a post-Avalanchian sense of reinvention in sampling.

Occasionally fucking gorgeous. Goddamn that William Tyler opener.

And elsewhere raving up and on out.

--

I have no ideas what these boys are doing, is what I'm saying.

But it's woolly and impossible and groovesome and inventive and blindingly brilliant.

A suckerpunch of beauty and hookability that only gets better with deeper looks, until you don't know what's new or old, what's data what's pointer, what's source what's echo.

Essential shit 4.5/5

#2454 Stick Pulse Projekt - Let Da Musik Talk

Soulful, quietly adventurous dub, with a real sense of community and simmering dissatisfaction and sending out feelers for allies around the world. This kind of global rhythm-nicking has been tainted by the Starbucks-ready Bonobo-types, but if you can get past that it's a quietly inventive album, weaving a soothing tapestry of atmospheres 3/5

#2163 Rhythm and Sound - The Versions

Dark, pulsing dub that's ever-changing , always, if slowly, ever-changing - electronic fizzles and glitches join the usual beats and bass, a seething variety of reverb and effects lend depth and mystery to the pulses. Never quite interesting, never nearly boring - a rich instrumental underworld to get lost in 3.5/5