Womad

On-U Sound Showcase

20:15 24th July on the Siam Tent

Whenever talk turns to who the great record producers were, the resulting list features plenty of household names - Phil Spector, George Martin, Rick Rubin... There's a well-attended school of thought that believes that the name of Adrian Sherwood should be uttered in the same breath. After all, he's supervised sessions with people like Sinead O'Connor, Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails and Primal Scream. But it's his river-deep love of Jamaican dub that has carved him his greatest identity, as proprietor of the hugely beloved On-U Sounds label and producer of dubwise sonic excursions by the likes of African Head Charge and Prince Far-I, as well as the records of his guests tonight.

Adrian started working with Lee 'Scratch' Perry back in the mid-80s and has collaborated with his great hero on and off ever since. Lee, of course, is THE maverick of Jamaican music, the man who not only produced Bob Marley, Junior Murvin and The Heptones but who also answers to the names The Upsetter and Pipecock Jaxxon. Despite now being the other side of 70, his off-kilter enthusiasm remains intact, a quality celebrated by Rolling Stone when it named Lee among its 100 Greatest Artists Of All Time.

Arguably Adrian's most ambitious project was helping to marry dub to American blues to such potent effect on the records by the band Little Axe. Well, we say 'band' but Little Axe is really just the trading name of one Skip MacDonald, an Ohioan who's led an enviably colourful musical life, whether as a member of the house band at pioneering hip-hop label Sugarhill Records (he plays guitar on Grandmaster Flash's The Message and White Lines) or being part of Tackhead, the Gary Clail-fronted dub/funk/electronica outfit. Little Axe remains Skip's greatest achievement though, a devastatingly handsome amalgam of lived-in tradition and, in his more expansive moments, sonic futurism.

Biog by Nige Tassell.