 Chinese Dub
Throughout July and August 2008, Jah Wobble, legendary bass player and contemporary renaissance man, toured the UK with his new project, Chinese Dub, a 22-piece Anglo-Chinese aural and visual spectacular. Combining his trademark dub with Chinese melodies and instrumentation, the maverick music-maker successfully married East and West sensibilities, proving once again that his creative adventurousness is far removed from others’ world music dilettantism. The tour culminated in an appearance on the BBC Radio 3 stage at WOMAD in what was, for many media commentators and punters alike, the highlight of the festival.
Chinese Dub, a studio album produced by Jah Wobble, includes singers Mongolian/Tibetan Gu Yin Ji and Wang Jingqi, from the Mao ethnic minority of China, part of Yunnan Province (both handpicked by Jah Wobble on a visit to China in 2007), internationally acclaimed guzheng player Zi Lan Liao, flutist Clive Bell, and Wobble himself, the Pagoda Chinese Youth Orchestra also features. For more details: Chinese Dub or album reviews
This album won the Best Cross Cultural Collaboration album catagory for the Songline world music 2009. To find out more about it, you can listen to the BBC radio 6music. |
Out on Serpent's Tail on the 24th September 2009
Memoirs of a Geezer: Music, Life, Mayhem (Paperback)
Written in his own unmistakable voice, this is a frank and fascinating account of a geezer’s life in the music business. Jah Wobble begins by offering the most authentic insider’s account of the beginning of punk rock yet written, but there's much more to him than that. His is an eventful life, as the celebrated ups – PiL’s The Metal Box, 90s hit Visions Of You with Sinead O’Connor – are balanced by major downs – chronic alcoholism and marital breakdown. It begins with an East End childhood in a London barely recovered from the War and ends with Wobble finally turning his back on London that no longer feels like home. Through the book Wobble tell it like he sees it: his opinions of the great and good from Malcolm Mcclaren to Peter Gabriel to Brian Eno to Iain Sinclair are refreshingly disrespectful. Oh and if you ever wondered how got his name, the answer is here: his teenage pal Sid Vicious gave it to him when he drunkenly slurred Wobble’s real name, John Wardle. |
