Jah Wobble
Dream World

THE REVIEW

The name Jah Wobble is primarily known to the small yet sizable audience of music enthusiasts for his central role in the sound of Public Image Ltd., but to frame this musician solely within this context would certainly be reductive. Wobble is indeed a complete musician and a 360-degree artist, a modern and contemporary composer tout-court: the comparison with musicians like Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit, even Brian Eno himself, surely makes sense and gives us a comprehensive portrait of this musician who boasts a diverse and prolific discography at the same time.

"Dream World" was recorded by John directly in his studio with the collaboration of his friend George King ("Havana," "Dream World," and "L'autoroute sans fin"), and it will be released on his own label without any particular promotion. Directly assignable to the genre definition "Jah Wobble," "Dream World" is a trip of acid trance music that immerses us in a surreal dimension: "A Chunk Of Funk" is seven minutes of funky groove and electronic music with sounds akin to Yellow Magic Orchestra; "Havana" is an Isaac Hayes theme shaken up in a Caribbean music mixer; "Cuban" is an Afro-Caribbean jazz that spins on an old turntable floating mid-air in the void; "Dream World" is a minimalist ambient composition; "Strange Land" is practically ten minutes of ghostly and obsessive dub with alien and hypnotic sounds; "Sleeping Hill" has an almost glitch sound where the bass imperiously dominates, causing states of paranoia and dizziness; with "On Steroids" we are projected directly into an alternative world set inside the video game "Space Invaders"; "L'autoroute sans fin" evokes a certain pop electronica reminiscent of Kraftwerk, while "Spirits By The Thames" is a cinematic theme remixed in an electronic and dubstep key that almost sounds like a Wall Of Voodoo piece played by Black Moth Super Rainbow.

The connection with the punk scene is still confirmed here, detached from any aesthetics of the period: Jah Wobble is English from Stepney in London’s East End, and in 1977 he was 19 years old. How could one think that a figure like him could have remained indifferent to such a historically significant and decisive phase for the counterculture of the era? Unlike many, however, he did not stop there and continued to expand his cultural horizons, creating his own world: the result is a broader vision that continues to expand more and more with each record until it engulfs us all inside a big world in the shape and connotations of a strobe light.