TTW#120 – Jay Glass Dubs – Two Devotional Songs For Spacemen 3 In The Style Of Love Inc.
Cassette only – limited edition of 150 copies
Buy on Bandcamp
A: Devotional Song One
B: Devotional Song Two
Written, mixed, produced and mastered by Jay Glass Dubs, Athens, 2019. Illustration: TAHNKS Berlin.
Dimitris Papadatos is a composer, musician and sound artist based in Athens, Greece. The main concern in his work is an apposition of disparate elements that assume a re-appropriation of historically applied methodologies while questioning forms of empowering them. The biggest body of his work reflects issues as copyright, spirituality and originality, undergoing a constant state of transfiguration of its outsourcing. His project, Jay Glass Dubs, is an exercise of style focusing on a counter-factual historical approach of dub music, stripped down to its basic drum/bass/vox/effects form.
Reviews
Vanity Fair (FR):
Rétrospective : Les 35 meilleurs albums de 2019 – Deux morceaux, un par face sur une cassette, qui s’écoule en boucle, méditative et inquiète, cherchant à happer et emporter loin. Cet hommage au plus grand groupe de rock anglais des années 80, mixant des sons à la façon de vagues hypnotiques, distord le temps et affecte les synapses, fait flotter le corps - si tant est que l’on soit prêt à tout abandonner pour la musique, pour l’élévation. J.G.
The Wire (UK):
Some artists […] are better heard in analogue. That’s particularly true for Greek post-dub producer Dimitris Papadatos’s Jay Glass Dubs project who has already released on cassette, not only through The Tapeworm but other labels like Seagrave, THRHNDRDSVNTNN and Origin Peoples. It makes sense, given the somewhat overstated conceptual focus of Papadatos’s “counter-factual” approach to the Jamaican rhythm. He once again reminds us that his interests lie in the methodologies, rather than the historical context of this sound – with which he initially engaged through Fugazi and Bauhaus rather than King Tubby or Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry. Two Devotional Songs For Spacemen 3 In The Style Of Love Inc presents more of the musique concrète exploration of the drum/bass/vocals/effects compositional form over two durational pieces that build upon – and are overcome by – their own haunting reverb and disintegrating echo. These sounds will only become more degraded on tape over time.
Boomkat (UK):
For The Tapeworm’s 10th anniversary batch Jay Glass Dubs commits a lush suite of dubbed-out sampledelia in a totally enchanted style nodding to his heroes Spacemen 3 and others.
Across 40 minutes of tape Jay filters samples of himself (lol), plus everyone from Costis Drygiannakis to Steely Dan, Laurie Anderson, Suicide, Duran Duran, ELO, Arlo Guthrie and Robert Wyatt into a free floating flux of voices percolated in elegant polka dub rhythms.
It’s intoxicating stuff, with Laurie Anderson providing a hiccuping motif that carries the A-side’s Wolfgang Voigt and Spacemen 3-styled cosmic saunter, while the B-side steps on the gas slightly to ride a dusty, cantering drum machine rhythm with scuffed, psychoactive electronics and swaying choral vocals that unfold with a deeply druggy, raga-like quality. It’s heavily gratifying to hear Jay Glass Dubs really grasp the potential of the long format with both hands here.
