Easy Star All Stars
Dub Side Of The Moon

Great TRIP In The Sky.

After the 13th review obsessing over the dark side of the moon, here is this gem of the "DUB face of the moon" which is much less dark than the original but, on the contrary, is illuminated by the Jamaican spring sun! This is "The DUB side of the moon" (2003) by the Easy Star All Stars.

In practice, it's as if we took Waters, Gilmour & company and gave them a makeover previously unimaginable:
- Away with those filthy hippie long hairs: dreadlocks for everyone!
- Enough with acids and sticky stuff, the watchword is: joints galore!
- Stop with the down-tempo rhythms, simple harmonic chords, and expanded atmospheres: reggae rhythms and even more hypnotic and... expanded atmospheres!

And so a timeless masterpiece that blah blah and blah (see the countless reviews of the Pink Floyd album) gets a makeover and is entrusted to this super band (who are excellent luxury musicians, essentially great session musicians mixed with big names in Jamaican music like Frankie Paul, Gary "Nesta" Pine (Wailers), Dr. Israel, The Meditations) to reinterpret the entire album in a reggae & dub key, reformulating the atmospheres in an unusual and disorienting reading but I would say, all in all, well executed.
In essence, if before the trip was something latent and lysergic, now we go straight to the heavy cannabis trip, which cushions the groove and gathers it in distorted arrangements that at the same time encapsulate the original essence (listen to samples here!). In short: we are talking about an album that is one of the major reggae recording phenomena of the last ten years, with a stable presence of almost two years in the Billboard's Top Reggae Chart (something that previously only happened to heavy hitters like UB40, Sean Paul, and the usual Bob Marley, just to say!).

In short, how can you not be bewitched and pleasantly disoriented by the intro of Speak to Me/Breathe (In the Air) or by Money where the initial sound of money is replaced by that of a water bong mixed with coughing fits? How can you not be enchanted by On The Run, set on a jungle rhythm, ideally continuing the natural development of the original track. Then Time takes on new life with the voices of the two singers, who roam the entire track alternating in reciting the original verses. The legendary Us And Them also arrives, hypnotic and trippy as never before, nebulous and compelling with its lazy and relaxed advance into dark and notably smoky territories.
Add to that Great Gig In The Sky (with the singer on duty making us soar high into territories never reached before), the warm Any Color You Like, with the addition of a sort of medley: Step It Pon The Rastaman Scene.

An album that doesn't have time to finish before you immediately want to listen to it again from the beginning in a continuous whole without distinction between one track and another. I imagine that Pink Floyd purists will scream in horror and stay away, but for those who do not idolize anyone and are always ready to enjoy almost 70 minutes of good reggae, I would say it is really worth it.

In short: lots of smoke and lots of fire!

P.S. Also worth mentioning (by the same group) is "Radiodread" with the reggae reinterpretation of the legendary "Ok Computer" by the radioheads, which I haven't listened to but I'm dying of curiosity to do so at this point...