Communist Dub is Pan Sonic member Ilpo Väisänen’s second solo album for (Editions) Mego (Asuma having appeared 2001). This striking new release is a statement against technocracy and the erosion of human community.
Whilst Jamaican Dub and Ska are often cited as an influence on Väisänen's work, this album utilises Dub as strategy as opposed to genre – the precise manipulation of sound and the removal of all extraneous material to create a disorientating landscape of austere spaces. Pulled into a sucking pit of reverb and echo, the listener can choose whether to be pummelled into submission or to reflect on their situation. Väisänen's intricate rhythmic structures propel the listener from monochrome machinic matrices to head-wrecking abstraction.
The ten track titles hint at failed emancipatory projects of the last century with a nod to the present situation - “Donetsk Disciples: Bolsheviks meeting the farmers (and wiping them out)”, “Benghazi Affair: Libyan connection and arming the forces, but history is taking over. A burning man in Tunisia starts the future.” Communist Dub is a ruthless criticism of everything existing, but one ultimately tempered by hope.
John Eden