Easy Star All-Stars
Radiodread

THE REVIEW

They're back.

The commando of expert producers and Jamaican musicians hiding behind the name Easy Star All-Stars returns three years after 'The Dub Side Of The Moon' to reinterpret another masterpiece (even greater) of English psychedelic rock in a reggae/dub style: 'Ok Computer'.

An operation on paper very promising, but equally arduous: how can the alienating structures of that record be combined with the island mood? Difficult to answer, Radiodread does not completely solve the dilemma.

Some excellent reinterpretations are interspersed with less convincing moments, almost as if the team were too intimidated by such complexity: the gap is mainly in the inability to reproduce Thom Yorke's very unique vocal tone. If Horace Andy (historical voice of Massive Attack and perhaps the most beautiful Caribbean falsetto ever) makes "Airbag" exceptionally his own, the same cannot be said for Kirsty Rock grappling with an uncertain but highly enhanced by the horns expanded "Paranoid Android". Even the great Toots (the James Brown of Kingston) fails to convince in "Let Down", which seems like any reggae standard.

More convincing are "Exit Music", very dubby, and "Fitter Happier" which is transformed from interlude to a small experiment of convincing avant-dub.

Unfortunately, the expectations are not met for the beautiful "Karma Police" (here really shabby) and "Electioneering" which loses all its distorted and almost Velvet Underground-like charge.
Very suggestive and successful are "Climbing Up The Walls", "No Surprises and Lucky": a fantastic triptych that seductively flirts with rock, dub, and I dare say trip-hop.

The album ends with the dub versions of "Airbag" and "Exit Music": one more enchanting than the other. And these two tracks raise the suspicion that if the Easy Star All-Stars had dared a little more with reverbs and echoes, the result would probably have been closer to the alienated spirit of the original.