(09.12.05) When reggae songs were first released, they came out on a 7″ with the
flip side being an instrumental version of the song, the dub-plate if
you will. “Versioning” was a reference to lyric free tracks,
fugacious renditions that would drift like thick smoke through the
dancehalls before disappearing into the hot Jamaican night. Version,
the duo of Benny E. Sanches and Richard G. Jones, have been to the
dancehalls and returned with the flavor of the old country, as if a
trip to Jamaica netted an old tin can filled with thick marijuana
smoke and the reverb of old dub ghosts.
“It’s all part of cosmic consciousness,” an announcer’s voice echoes
through the into to “Borrowed Time,” setting the reverb stage for the
transcendental smoke-out of Gardens of Utopia. As the slow dub
beats, wrapped in a wreath of violins, slide into this temporal space,
Version suspends the natural motion of time, dropping us into liquid
dub where every sound is but a version of the first echo — that
primal echo which started all head-nodding. A small piano tinkles its way through “Love Redux” as a smooth operator hums into his lover’s
ear, his patois vibrating every hair in her ear canal with the slow
syrup of his time-delayed voice. The drumkit of “Head Stash” is Tino
Corp style beat work, the bass slumbering in the background like a
restless tiger going through REM sleep. While a saxophone undulates a
slow melody like a wisp of swamp fog, a ghostly voice surfaces through
a rattle of plastic pipes like a voodoo loa coming ’round to pick up a
chicken or two from the sacrificial altar. A horn section lifted
from session work on a 1960’s spy film pop up in the studio for stab
work on the bubbling “She Has No Name” while a Yma Sumac-style crooner
caught in a vinyl loop moans mysteriously over an effervescing
percussion rhythm.
That can of rasta smoke? Yeah, Version brought it back to the States
where it was carefully stored for a few years before being opened in
the studio where the haze was allowed to soak into the wood and metal
of the instruments. Hints of Bill Laswell and Jack Dangers abound in
Gardens of Utopia like exotic top notes and the well-cured
flavor of a homegrown hand-rolled spliff.
Gardens of Utopia is out now on New Blues Musik.
