Dub Chamber 3

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ALBUM INFORMATION

Total Tracks: 4   Total Length: 48:02

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A good listen overall

Germanprof

I hesitated over this one as the samples sounded a bit anemic, and reviewers elsewhere seem to either love or hate it (in the latter camp are dub purists), but I'm glad I went ahead. Cybotron is the most funky and aggressive track, built on a captivatingly assertive bassline. Beyond the Zero and Devil Syndrome are both more dreamy, with nice Jazzy touches. A screaming across the sky is perhaps the dreamiest - it does have an expansive feel but drifts a little aimlessly for the first half before a brief ambient interlude is followed by a change of direction and a somewhat more purposeful second half (this is still the least successful track to my personal ear). The overall feel of the album is sunny and pleasant. Tracks 1+2 would give you a pretty accurate flavor of the whole.

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They Say All Media Guide

There’s no doubting Bill Laswell’s sincere love of dub (the reggae subgenre that anticipated remix culture by about 20 years). As one of the finest and most tasteful bass players on the planet, Laswell’s grounding in reggae is evident in every note he plays, and his mystical, experimental production style has always been heavily influenced by such dubmasters as King Tubby, Scientist, and Lee “Scratch” Perry. But for all of the experimentalism (and sometimes downright abrasiveness) of many of his projects, he has been fairly criticized in the past for getting mushy when he gets into an explicitly dubwise context. Most notoriously, he managed to squander a great opportunity when he turned an entire album’s worth of classic Bob Marley material into soupy multi-culti muzak. But the third volume in his Sacred System trilogy (called, confusingly, Dub Chamber 3) is more muscular than some of his other dubwise excursions, and although there’s not much here to challenge the mind, the dreamy flavor of this music is consistently fortified by sturdy beats and Laswell’s inimitably tasty basslines. The album consists of four long tracks; on all of them, he’s joined by guitarist Nicky Skopelitis, and two of them also feature the playing of Norwegian trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer, whose treated trumpet gives everything a beautiful, eerie sheen. Other guests include bassist Jah Wobble, percussionist Karsh Kale, and pianist Craig Taborn. Recommended. – Rick Anderson

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