Ryan Moore has been making dub music for almost twenty years now and, to celebrate that anniversary, he’s gone back to the archives to put together a collection of previously unreleased material. Dub From The Secret Vaults isn’t an attempt to cash in on old material; rather, these tracks — ranging from his early cassette release days to recent collaborations with Niels Van Hoorn and Thomas Ziegler — are living testimony to Moore’s persistent love affair with the sonorous echo of
the dub chamber.
Moore’s technique is extremely DIY: he plays every instrument on the record (with the exception of a few guest musicians scattered on an odd number of tracks), layering the instrumentation with painstaking care before applying a liberal dose
of the dub echo. It’s all done with analog equipment — very old school stylee — which gives his thick sound a living, breathing vitality. He doesn’t try to be complicated; he simply takes the time and care to explore one idea on each track,
wandering around the melody and exploring all the spaces where he can slip a sound and get an echo back. There’s a little Indian guitar flair in “Other Worlds of Dub,” a little organ grinding in “East of Memphis” and a Laswell style bassline wrapped around a bit of world beat and field recording in “Electric Africa.”
There are thirteen space explorations collected on Dub From The Secret Vaults and, while it is possible to guess which tracks are from the dusty racks in the back of the archive and which have been freshly laid down, the point isn’t one of charting Moore’s history. Dub From The Secret Vaults is a timeless slab, filled with the echoes of the past ringing on into the future. If you’re not familiar with Ryan Moore’s work, this is a good place to start. If you’re an old friend, then roll a fat one, turn out the lights and ease back. You know what kind of trip you are in for.
Dub From The Secret Vaults is out now on Roir Records.
