26.01.2007

Adrian Sherwood & JVSS live in London

23rd March 2007, Mass, London/Brixton

Adrian Sherwood and guests live show! Soundo Collective proudly announces it’s next gig which will take place on 23rd March 2007 at the Mass club in Brixton, London. A veteran record producer, the master of console, founder of the legendary On-U Sound label and the godfather of the British dub scene will perform live along with Joint Venture Sound System - pioneers of the Polish sound system scene. Adrian will invite some special guests to be on stage with him - surely we can expect a surprise here!

Adrian Sherwood has a many-sided artistic soul which allows him to work also with musicians who represent many different kinds of music such as: Lee Scratch Perry, Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, Asian Dub Foundation, Sinead O’Connor, Simply Red. In March Sherwood will be promoting his new, outstanding album Becoming a Cliche. This new production was released at the end of the last year by the Real World music company owned by Peter Gabriel.

Constantly touring the world makes Adrian Sherwood a very rare guest in London, his native town. It means that the gig in Mass will be the only place to familiarize ourselves with his live stage performance. As Adrian has a great affinity for polish people and reggae artists so it will also be an opportunity for him to play together with Priest Maken and Mario Dziurex Activator - his friends from JVSS.

This gig is going to be a very important and unique event in reggae and dub style.

Be there. Bless.
Soundo Collective Crew

Read an inteview which just have been published by One Week To Live magazine - Adrian Sherwood, an interview

Adrian Sherwood (On-U Sound)

Adrian Sherwood’s love affair with Jamaican music began back in the late ’60s when, as a child of 11, he would hang around outside a local West Indian club with a school friend, dancing on the pavement to the ska sounds of Prince Buster emanating from inside the club. It was the start of a lifelong association for the celebrated dub mixer/producer, who has just released his new album - Becoming A Cliche (Real World Records, November 2006).

Sherwood has spent the last twenty years or so producing and/or remixing some of the planet’s most innovative recordings under his own moniker or that of his On-U Sound label, stamping his big, fat, booming sonic trademark on hundreds of releases from African Headcharge and Dub Syndicate to Nine Inch Nails and Primal Scream. So revolutionary is his knob twiddling that artists have been beating a more or less constant path to his North London home where, in a home grown recording studio, Sherwood continues to play his mixing desk, bulldozing boundaries between funk, reggae, dub and good old industrial noise with ease.

At 18 he co-founded a small distribution company, Carib Gems, selling the records shop to shop from the boot of his car. Ever enterprising, he started making records himself; his early dub plates for the likes of Prince Far I, Creation Rebel and Dub Syndicate won him an invitation to play alongside such politically motivated, righteously angry bands as The Clash and The Slits. Cross -cultural interest heightened the tinderbox climate of the times. “The Punky Reggae Party was full on,” he sighs. “We thought we could change everything”.

In 1980, fired by the collective, optimistic spirit of the Rock Against Racism movement, he formed On-U Records (“It means ‘onus’, or very important sound”) and its equally ubiquitous touring offshoot, the On-U Sound System. Sherwood joined forces with Pop Group vocalist Mark Stewart and members of The Slits in projects like New Age Steppas, pushing dub and reggae into hitherto unknown territories of new wave and industrial rock. A vast army of reggae, funk, rock and rap artists - Bim Sherman, Cabaret Voltaire, Tackhead, Lee Perry, Gary Clail (for whom he produced a top ten hit with Human Nature), Keith Le Blanc and innumerable others - were soon clamouring for Sherwood’s wildly experimental studio techniques. The legacy of his use of technology, particularly the then unheard of use of ambience and delay, is evident to anyone familiar with today’s club scene and, it must be said, the work of multi-million selling acts like Moby.

The On-U vibe was democratic, leftfield, determinedly non-materialistic and unashamedly idealistic. With it, Sherwood created a niche. “It gave us an identity among like-minded people” he offers. “Anything with the On-U tag on it will sell a few thousand copies around the world, to people who know that we’ve been true to our spirit of making things”. It’s a mystery, really, why a music biz legend like Adrian Sherwood didn’t released a solo album during this long career. Okay, the man has been rather busy over the last twenty years or so, producing and/or remixing some of the planet’s most innovative recordings under his own moniker or that of his On-U Sound label, stamping his big, fat, booming sonic trademark on hundreds of releases.

Joint Venture Sound System (JVSS)

Joint Venture are pioneers of the Polish sound system scene. Their first dance party took place about 18 years ago and was one of the very first in their country. Over the time, especially nowadays with blooming dancehall reggae vibe, dozens of sounds appeared nation-wide. However, in new reality Joint Venture stay true to their principles of being unique and eclectic. JVSS are on the radical side of roots music: electro dub, old school dub, world club beat, Asian beats, new and old reggae always no compromise, no commercial elements, radical in sound and exploring new territories. They do not escape from fruits of modern electronic scene artists inspired by reggae dub & world music and remain open for various kinds of inspiration. At their sound system sets one can hear many special versions, unreleased tracks, dubplates, remixes coming out of Activators Black Volga / As One Studio (many still unreleased).

Activator is one of the most experienced Polish producers. He travelled round the world as a dub master and sound engineer for the most successful Polish world music act Warsaw Village Band. Many of his mixes can be found on several albums The Rootsman, Warsaw Village Band, Habakuk, Vavamuffin, Paprika Korps etc. The most successful Polish reggae album in recent time Vabang! of Vavamuffin was recorded and mixed by him. His remix of Adrian Sherwoods Silly Billy featuring 2Badcard on the voice and Crispy Horns (Zion Train, Love Grocer) is featured on the new Adrians solo album Becoming a Cliche on Real World. In JVSS he acts as a dub master uses his excellent skills of playing with effects, adds space to the music itself as well as to microphone chatting. The air is full of white noise, samples and echoes, turning the sound system more into live-act direction.

The overall sound is always properly equalized! DJ Bass Reprodukktor Priest Maken I, the founder of JVSS, is both a selector and MC / stage performer, using catholic priest uniforms on stage. He also runs a booking agency specializing in getting various roots/electro/world artists to Poland. At some parties JVSS perform with guest singers. The most often you can see brillant Reggaenerator - one of the Vavamuffin vocal forces. Ghetto Priest (On-U Sound System, Asian Dub Foundation), Jarex (Bakshish), Broda (Habakuk), Mamadou Diouf, MC Globbyman also sung with them. Over the years JVSS played hundreds of parties in Poland and abroad (Czech, Slovakia, France, Germany, Russia, UK) and many days on tour as supporting act in Poland for artists like Zion Train, On-U Sound System, The Rootsman or Dub Syndicate. First their homebase was Zgorzelec - small town on the German border, now they live in Warsaw.