Herald rating: ****
(London)
Review: Russell Baillie
If albums could walk, you'd expect his one would have been getting tear-gassed in Washington DC this week.
For ADF - the Anglo-Asian crew mixing dub, hip-hop, guitar rock and Indian rhythms, melodies and textures - don't just have a thing about life in Blighty as seen through politicised sons-of-migrant eyes. They occasionally go global with their groovy left-wing theorem, as on Crash where the world of high finance gets a funky but pessimistic forecast. Or the on spoken word Colour Line where the World Bank, IMF and GATT are all invoked as exploiters of the Third World.
But while ADF, here on their second album after take-notice 98 debut Rafi's Revenge, might be thinking global they're still the most convincing when they're getting vocal and local.
Blair's Cool Britannia gets a sharp needling on the opener Real Great Britain. The celebratory New Way, New Life gives an articulate perspective about the generational shift between Asian immigrants and their UK-born offspring.
Serious, seriously wordy stuff and lots of it certainly. But did we mention the music is terrific too? "Dub" might figure in the name but ADF have got around the style's chief failings - it's a bit slow and it doesn't say much - with a mix of hip-hop sonic cut'n'paste, humming baselines, rock dynamics and a rhythmic gearbox which shifts easily from ragga skank to tabla turbocharge.
It's invigorating throughout, whether it's in frantic placard waving mode, getting paranoid over a few hulking dubscapes, throwing in the occasional psychedelic instrumental (Riddim I Like) or paying tribute to the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan on a reworking of his Taa Deem.
It's an unwieldy album and one that leaves you with excited but mixed feelings: Should we go out for a curry before or after we storm the barricades?
Asian Dub Foundation - <i>Community Music</i>
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