Androo - Tribute to Jackie Mittoo

After reissuing Jackie Mittoo’s ‘In Africa’ album, the Sound Metaphors crew have wisely given Androo the green light to pay his own homage to the legendary Jamaican musician & composer on their sub label Miss You. I’ve been following Androo’s output keenly, and as I’ve also been wanting to put up some more Dub music on here, this one seemed a no brainer. However in typical fashion of the Geneva based producer, this is pretty far from a conventional Dub record - falling somewhere in a grey area between Leftfield, Dub & Jazz, looking simultaneously to the past and to the future.

There’s a clear conceptual approach to the record as a whole, both sides start with an intro and outro, but it's the different versions of the same track in-between these that separates them. Each side samples ‘Major T-BAY Loves Girls’ & ‘Shake A Leg High Life’ respectively, and you’ll hear the shared tonalities from each track, but there’s no doubt both are intricately sliced up, dubbed and mutated into complete new entities.

The A side’s ‘Major T-bay Loves Dub (Rhythm O-dub)’ is the most dance floor friendly, it’s atmosphere is light but a heavy bassline underpins a 4x4 groove which rolls for the duration of the track, stabs and keys reinforce this whilst all manner of drums and instrumentation are woven in, their delay & reverb tails deftly puncturing and drifting around the soundscape. ‘(Far, O’Dub, Ahmix)’ takes things down a notch, steering slightly left it retains a similar groove, however this is pushed back in the mix, freeing up space to play with the instrumental and atmospheric elements of the track. Dissonant elements and textures seep in against calming keys, the vibe steadily shifting more hallucinogenic as it progresses, anticipating the switch in approach over the coming tracks.

On ‘Shake A Leg High Life (Dub, Sun, Arp)’ there’s steady beat you can follow for the majority of this track, but this is the only rigidity that it retains, a clear channeling of the improvisational, Free Jazz influences which draw a line between the the two sides of the record. Harmony is no longer a constraint, and by the time we reach the ‘Xendubz Akismix’ we’ve veered completely off grid, in all senses. Heavily distorted drums, squelchy un-synced synths, it is what you expect to hear from a group of live Jazz musicians, improvisation reining supreme. Whilst it would be a stretch to draw any comparison to some of the greats, Androo definitely heeded the words “There are no wrong notes”, something which at face value anybody can do, yet not anybody can pull off.

Not everyday listening, but when the mood is right, I know I will find myself coming back to this one. You can go support here.