Welcome To My World is now available from our eshop.
Jah Wobble - Welcome To My World is now available
Japanese Dub Live Dates:
They say that in London you are only ever a few yards away from a rat, well on this album you are never too far away from Dub, (the form of music that I think best symbolises our yearning for the infinite, for what lies beyond’ the material world). However, ‘Welcome to my World’ does have some interesting, (well to me anyway), other angles. On this album, you will hear homage paid, (albeit in my own conceited fashion), to some of my musical heroes, such as Miles Davis, Gil Evans, Mohamed Abdel Wahab and Joe Zawinul. You will also hear sonic tribute paid to some of my favourite areas of ‘my world,’ not least Andaluca, Ancoats, India, Putney, Brazil, Stockport and the Seven Sisters Road area of Tottenham, all of which resonate throughout these recordings.
I also have a stab at mixing late romantic/early impressionist styles of the late 19th and early 20th century with a Dub ‘foundation’. I like the way the late romantic period and early impressionist composers wear their hearts on their musical sleeves in such, (at times ludicrously), melodramatic fashion. The strings swell as if the whole orchestra is about to burst into tears out of sympathy with the (highly strung) composer. They flit about between minor and major scales at the drop of the composer’s hat. On occasion I quite like that moody complex vibe. And to give it a groove makes it feel complete, in so far as you can then confidently prance around to it. In fact I have now fashioned a number of highly dramatic ‘Dub Step’ moves which I perform with a haughty melodramatic air around my studio. During those occasions I fancy myself to be a bit of a Mahler, set free in the three dimensional world of Nijinsky, (the Russian geezer, not the horse). For a sturdily built middle aged man, I move lithely, lightly and really rather elegantly to my own heady musical concoctions.
Additionally, on ‘WTMW,’ I lionise aspects of the sequenced music of the Acid House rave period as it progressed into early to mid nineties drum and bass, via the tracks ‘M25’ and ‘M60’. Such an English sub genre, it’s not surprising that there is a small nod towards the likes of Vaughan Williams and Elgar at the end of ‘M25’. I just couldn’t resist it.
Some of the tracks on ‘Welcome to my World’ were written immediately after walks. For instance the basis of ‘Highgate’ was written on Hampstead Heath on a battery powered sequencer. It was never an area of London that I knew very well or indeed that I particularly liked. I have always found it to be a rather melancholic place. (It’s no wonder that the infamous ‘Suicide Bridge’ exists there). However after writing the track I now feel more connected and sympathetic to that area of London. ‘Putney’ is another track written straight after a walk, along the banks of the Thames, from Richmond (where I ate mussels and chips) to Putney. It’s the first time that I have consciously had a go at making sixties flavoured psychedelia, (albeit with a dub flavour). I try my best to sing like ‘Tiny Tim’ on ‘Putney’.
Sun 25 July - Festival of World Cultures
Mon 26 July - Sheffield O2 Academy2
Tues 27 July - Glasgow O2 ABC2
Wed 28 July - Newcastle O2 Academy2
Thurs 29 July - The Ruby Lounge, Manchester
Fri 30 July - Birmingham O2 Academy3
Sat 31 July - Islington O2 Academy2
Sun 1 Aug - Bristol O2 Academy2
Wed 4 Aug - Oxford O2 Academy2
Thurs 5 Aug - Liverpool O2 Academy3
Sat 23 Oct - Musicport World Music Festival, North Yorkshire
Sun 31 Oct - Ethias Arena, Hasselt,Belgium
Blowup -
Jah Wobble's Directorial and Acting Debut
The track - 'Blowup' is taking from Jah Wobble's forthcoming album: 'Welcome To My World'.
For many years I have fancied having a stab at directing a short film. I wanted to make a piece that ‘stood alone’ and was not just a vehicle for promoting one of my tracks. (I think pop videos, in this post modern age, are such ‘old hat’). My initial thought was to honour Ingmar Bergman’s ‘Winter Sun,’ which is one of my favourite films. I quite fancied myself playing the part of a priest having a crisis of faith. I envisaged a stark black and white affair set in contemporary inner city setting. Don’t get me wrong, along with those two other iconic existentialists, Jean Luc Godard and Michelangelo Antonioni, Bergman’s movies delight, depress, confound and irritate me in equal measure; having said that, I respect the three of them enormously, both for their dazzling radicalism and sheer directorial skill and vision. (Without a shadow of doubt Andrei Tarkosvy picked up their mantle a decade later. It’s the new wave of Turkish and Iranian directors, along with HBO, who now lead the charge in studies of lonely intellectuals having spiritual crises’).
for more information about the film, go to: Blow up
