Adrian Sherwood’s Survival & Resistance

Today a promo landed on my desk, the forthcoming album from Adrian Sherwood entitled Survival & Resistance and boy is it good.

Adrian Sherwood is somewhat of a legend. The English record producer’s early involvement with dub music – and specifically with Jamaican artist Lee “Scratch” Perry – was the beginning an on-going relationship with all music in its many forms. He has lived a life on the periphery of pop, punk and rock (never sacrificing his integrity for the mainstream), produced with The Cure and Nine Inch Nails and has been involved in countless record labels.  On-U Sound Records, however, is his baby, an imprint that truly stands the test of time releasing music for Dub Syndicate, African Head Charge, Asian Dub Foundation (to name but a few).

As per the press release, the album – which will be the third of its kind in Sherwood’s back catalogue – claims to draw “on the upheaval of the all-too-recent London riots and staring down the current international economic crisis”, a “earnest critique of current injustices”. The thing that surprised me the most is that it wasn’t what I expected from Adrian Sherwood, then again I don’t know what that would have been exactly. Both uplifting in its complex, cinematic-led structures and darkening in its twitching sounds and looming sense of unrest the album certainly requires a few listens to really see the beauty of it.

Survival & Resistance is released via On-U Sound on 20th August 2012.

Tracklist
01. Balance
02. Trapped Here
03. U.R.Sound
04. Starship Bahia
05. Effective
06. We Flick The Switch
07. Bossa 2
08. Two Semitones and a Raver
09. Last Queen of England
10. Greenleaves