Darryl Jenifer – In Search of Black Judas
Reviewed by Sadie O., 10/14/10
Deep Reggae dub/electronica/sound collage from the bassist of Bad Brains. A couple bits in tracks 2 and 3 are a bit reminiscent of Bad Brains, but mostly it’s minimalist dub skanks (he produced Bedouin Soundclash, which this is a lot closer to. Note – the things called Moshes are not going to provoke pit warnings! Overall really rather relaxed and pretty, but future-dubby.
No FCCs detected, but vocals are pretty much all garbled. I like 11 and 12 best, but anything with 3 stars is very cool, and 2 stars quite good.
1. 0:52 *whoops, random low sounds (nice intro, but a bit minimalist for radio IMO)
2. 3:59 **bit of vocal intro, then power chords, “Black Judas” repeated until you can hardly stand it anymore… After a minute changes to very minimalist dub bubble, soft singing.
3. 2:57 ***talking in Arabic (?) and plinks, then downtempo dubby skank, talking in very accented English (very hard to make out) – gets heavy for a bit after about a minute. Rather an nice blend of dub and heavy guitar and sound collage.
4. 0:54 *spoken sample intro, a bit of nice minimalist dub skank with samples.
5. 4:50 ***more hard to hear talking, downtempo skank with jazzy horn section. Some vocal sampling that sounds like Don Cornelius on Quaaludes. Goes right into next track.
6. 1:03 ***dubby, a bit jungly, midtempo skank with classic “dub” elements, but groovy syncopated beat. Too bad it’s so short…
7. 3:22 ***downtempo but upbeat skank with relaxed overtones. I think that describes it pretty well… Very minimal vocals, pretty.
8. 1:52 **nice slow dub skank with totally incomprehensible blips of vocals, but a quite groovy dub sound.
9. 3:04 ***pretty (! Yes!) slow, downbeat skank with nyahbinghi drums and keyboard. Almost laughably unmoshable… Am I getting too high? Are my eyebrows in the right place?
10. 1:04 *smooth jazz electronica. Not uninteresting – Edwin will like this.
11. 3:10 ****downtempo slinky skank, almost understandable vocals, nice sound.
12. 1:40 ****emphatic downtempo tuba and shaker skank – adds elements, and sounds great.
13. 3:42 ***uptempo bubble with low, dubby vocals. Love song! Usually I can’t stand those, but this is way groovy.
14. 3:14 **slow dub skank, garbled vocals. Ends with 5 seconds of rather ugly electronics.
15. 1:35 **slow dub skank (this is sounding familier), synchopated beat, no vocals, electronics and melodica.
16. 0:42 *funky, a bit slow jazzy, outro.