New releases last two weeks: Dub

Review: Spanish musician Bass Lee delivers a strong debut instrumental album with Roots across 10 tracks of deep roots rockers led by his signature melodica. The collection was produced alongside Roberto Sanchez at A-Lone Ark Muzik Studio and features standout tracks like the uplifting 'Enlightenment' and the meditative nyahbinghi-inspired 'East African Rift.' The album was developed during a studio session that also birthed albums by Clive Matthews and Lone Ark Riddim Force and completes a trilogy focused on timeless reggae foundations that are rich in analogue warmth and melodic finesse. All of this affirms Bass Lee's place in the new wave of roots reggae musicians pushing the genre forward.

Review: Originally released in 2016, Celtic Vedic now lands on vinyl for the first time, fully remastered and expanded with a previously unreleased track. At the heart of this sprawling ambient dub record is Youth - aka Martin Glover - whose decades-deep credentials (Killing Joke, The Orb, Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney, etc) need little introduction. One of his most revered and emulated projects, Dub Trees pitted Jah Wobble, Matt Black (Coldcut), Andrew Weatherall, Mixmaster Morris against a host of instrumentalists from the Celtic and Indian classical traditions. Flutes, harps, tubaphone, pipes and chants are warped and refracted through Youth's psydub prism, tracing speculative links between Druidic and Vedic cultures. This LP closes a trilogy that began with Hicksville and East Of The River Ganges, and still sounds great: holographic, saturated, and utterly unplaceable.

Review: UK dub punk innovator, ambient dub pioneer and sometime super producer Youth revisits one of his most expansive projects with a remastered vinyl edition of this offering, originally released under the Dub Trees banner in 2016. It's a vast, cinematic journey-eleven dubbed-out voyages plus a bonus track-where psydub, spiritual jazz, and ancient modal drones converge in exploratory motion. The 'Distant Green Shore Dub' of 'Return To The River Ganges' sets the tone: booming sub-bass, glistening tabla, and warped pads swirling like incense smoke. 'Mediolana (Ambrosirus Dub)' and 'Dhaka Corinthia (Gergeovic Dub)' fold Mediterranean and Bengali textures into tripped-out spatial frameworks, while 'Voyage of the Pytheas (Pagan Dub)' and 'Delfic Tongue (Hercynian Forest Dub)' veer into Weatherall-esque terrain-part kosmische, part misty-eyed ritual. Galician pipes, bansuri, tubaphone and Celtic harp all shimmer through the mix, filtered through Youth's dense, tactile production. This is folk memory via aux cable-pagan futurism that's both grounded and astral.

Review: The title of this new rarities retrospect-trove of King Tubby and Augustus Pablo's magnetic meeting of minds references the address of the former dubber's legendary studio, where each of these 13 never-heard-before collaborative renditions were mixed. The King Tubbys studio was instrumental in shaping the dub genre, and this release captures the essence of that era, with the closing notable 'Stop Them Jah' hearing vocals by roots icon Jacob Miller, closing out an otherwise near whole-numbered blitz of versions.

Review: The scale is staggering, but the result is as focused and spiritual as any great dub record should be. Helmed by Swiss producer and keyboardist Mathias Liengme, this set draws together dozens of Jamaican session players from the 70s to todayithink Sly Dunbar, Vin Gordon, Ernest Ranglinion nine instrumental dubs cut and sculpted by Roberto Sanchez. '1000 Light Years DUB' opens with spacey textures and a tightly coiled rhythm section, easing into the skanking horns of 'In The Shadow DUB'. 'Whitewater DUB' flows warm and steady, while 'Memories of Old DUB' evokes roots nostalgia without drifting into pastiche. 'Rose Hall's Birds DUB' stands out for its bright brass interplay; 'Squirrel Inna Barrel DUB' rides a darker groove, led by echo-laden percussion. 'Under The Cotton Tree DUB' softens the tempo with flute and keys, followed by the spacious bass work of '45 Charles Street DUB'. The closer, 'Everlasting Love DUB', arranged around Errol Kong's melody, feels like both a send-off and an embraceiglowing, open, eternal.

Review: Stephen Vitiello, Brendan Canty and Hahn Rowe pull strings in strange and rewarding directions on Second, the chameleonic follow-up to their 2023 debut piece First. Vitiello, having left behind a vista's trail of ambient, lowercase and electroacoustic work with the likes of Taylor Deupree and Pauline Oliveros, now sketches raw forms with Rhodes, guitar and modular gear before looping in Canty and Rowe. The former adds drums, bass and piano with typical restlessness; the latter, once of Hugo Largo, folds in bowed guitar, viola and 12-string textures. There's a thread of freeform drift here, but it's sotted in dub weight, Krautrock pulse and post-punk lean. "We're coming from three different schools," Vitiello notes. Throw in a guest spot from Animal Collective's Geologist on hurdy gurdy, and it's a strange little world built on sideways logic.