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Review: 'Asian Dub Foundation'
'Access Denied (Deluxe Edition)'   

-  Label: 'X-Ray Production'
-  Genre: 'Reggae' -  Release Date: '12.6.21.'-  Catalogue No: 'SDRM.XPRVY2108'

Our Rating:
This is the Record Store Day double vinyl in gatefold sleeve Deluxe edition of Asian Dub Foundations recent Access Denied album that comes with 5 bonus tracks to make the album even more hard hitting than it was, as they tackle Immigration issues, the migrant experience and what a mess the world is in, in the only way they know through hard hitting hybrid music as only they can.

The A side opens with Can't Pay Won't Pay a very in your face slice of Indo dub rock fusion about being on the bottom rungs of society and being unable to pay the bills.

Stealing The Future is super speedy beats colliding with righteously bile ridden vocals from Aktarvator who is angry at everything that as ever has been stolen from the downtrodden underclasses this also has Nathan Flutebox Lee's first chunky Flute break to really lead into the ferocious drum and bass parts.

Frontline has an organic intro into the main rapped lyrics from Ghetto Priest about how the media demean minorities as they fight for freedom for all oppressed people of the world.
The album's title track Access Denied opens like an acoustic dub tune from Junior Delgado as this tale of barriers and racism unfolds with lots of truth in how denial is an integral part of the system.

Re-alignment is a flute funk Philly soul dance monster that becomes a gloriously cinematic almost neo classical instrumental.

Coming Over Here Feat Stewart Lee is the number one single from the album that takes a classic Stewart Lee Monologue and re-works it into a rap rock crossover hit, this is a crucial tune about one of the oldest lines in the English racists books, of how whoever it is has come over here and taken their jobs, when as my Grandmother Lily always put it us as kids in the 1970's, they have come over here to do the jobs the English are too lazy to do themselves, this was often accompanied with tales of how she grew up in her dad's grocers shop in Maxilla Gardens Notting Hill in the first half of the last century, which is where 4 years ago today the tower block they built where the shop once was, Grenfell Tower burned down. She would often tell us how hard Menachem her dad found it to get his head round how someone could be a regular customer, who when drunk would happily piss into the shops cellar and then expect everyone to be super polite to them, yes coming over here doing jobs the English never apply for. This is a brilliant tune about a perpetual problem the English need to get over.

The B-side opens with Human 47 -Feat. 47 Soul that features guest vocals from Tarek Abu Kwaik and Ramzy Suleiman as they rail as furiously as this scratchy Digi Palestinian dub madness that chops and changes while they ask for sanity in Palestine and certainly saner solutions than the ones one of my childhood best friends currently wants to offer in all his insane Zionist way. This tune is as mad as the rhetoric that spills out on this issue, with the same arguments that pushed me away from the synagogue I grew up in, as I realized just how racist the people who were always complaining about anti-Semitism seemed to be themselves.

Mindlock has a brain washing beat to wobble the walls to as its impossible mission unfolds as it tries to free society from its Mindlock, sit back and let this tune open your mind.
Swarm is a tabla driven dance mantra to get all trancey with as the lesson of the mantra helps to heal us all as we join the Asian Dub Foundation Swarm.

Lost In The Shadows makes a good point about how hard it is to able to do your own thing and live how you want to live. I love the backing vocals and all the effects this has on all sorts of bits in this tune, it will need to be heard over and over to really get all the lyrical content as well as the towering flute and blaxploitation guitars.

Youthquake Part 1 Greta Speaks takes a classic Greta Thunberg speech and treats it how countless Tariq Ali speeches have been by ADF and others over the years in turning it into a dank digi-dub dystopian dread soundscape to help Greta get her point across to as many of us as possible.

The C-side opens with New Alignment that is a flute led dub dance colossus of a tune to fill the dancefloor with.

Frontline Santiago- Feat Ana Tijoux is a rap dance tune for all the people fighting not to be treated as scum just for being Muslim or other in anyway and asking how we move past the petty name calling and get the planet in a better place with less division.

Smash And Grab The Future-feat. Dub FX is a street rapper angrily ranting at all the racists and haters as they fight for equality in this new automated digital age.

Coming Over Here-feat. Stewart Lee (Neolithic) is the first of the bonus tracks and takes the core argument that the English have always complained about any foreigner coming over here and making the country better as a grave insult all the way back to Neolithic times it is set to some dark dystopian mantric style dub.

The D side opens with Hovering Shadow (Live Mix By Adrian Sherwood) and it's a dank flute funk-dub mix that's magisterial mystical and magical and very cool as Mr Sherwood's mixes almost always are.

Kursk Down (Live Mix By Adrian Sherwood) is a heavyweight dub to shake your belly too as the far out flute takes things to another level.

Access Denied (Manudigital Remix) almost turns it into a late 80's World Music style (I know a dreaded term as all music is World Music) Dance pop tune, that gives the vocals a more upfront feel.

The album closes with Swarm (Panda Dub Remix) that has a deep Wackies style digi-dub feel on this huge tune, with its consciousness raising lyrics front and centre.

Find out more at www.asiandubfoundation.com www.bassculture.it www.xrayproduction.com
  author: simonovitch

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