fade away, gonna fade away

After the first wave of the original punk scene had fallen gracelessly to the floor and emitted its foul death rattle, there arrived this peculiar period in the pseudo-underground music scene, a vacuum of anti-commercialism and anti-anti-commercialism. It was time to look for influences outside of the norm, and for a great many bands, it was reggae and dub that they merged with their punk/rock sounds and art school ideologies. Reggae having served the seventies in a brief grindhouse vogue along with kung fu and comic-book psychedelia, it had just enough of the public unconscious to serve as some bedrock.

The New Age Steppers were notable as a compendium of many of the leading lights of the underground, in particular The Slits’ Ari-Up and The Pop Group’s Mark Stewart. However, while those bands were undeniably dub-inflected, the Steppers were pretty much pure dub, and their album inaugurated a new British dub record label, On-U Sound. Apart from the stuttering, clattering mecha-dub sound (especially on “Radial Drill”), it is only the songs sung by Mark Stewart that hint at their post-punk connections. Stewart takes a stance more of a protester than a singer, shouting in a high voice about ideals and the downtrodden minorities. Like a lot of classic dub, the sonics on this album are all wonky, the volume is all over the place, often giving the effect of warped tape, with the vocals disappearing into the background or suddenly bursting out with sharp clarity. Their adherence to the authenticity of the album is certainly admirable, but the trouble is that at bottom the songs just don’t have enough to grab on to. They lack the killer grooves of great dub as well as the ragged energy of the best post-punk, although “Animal Space” and “Private Armies” have a good serving of both, filtered through that intriguingly fucked-up sound quality. While their passion for the music and the influences they draw on is palpable, the whole process feels somewhat academic and dry, although it remains a fascinating relic of its era.

***

~ by jshopa on November 24, 2008.