Asian Dub Foundation

Bedlam A Go-Go

2nd April 1998 at Colchester Art Center

London England

Bedlam A Go-Go were the opening act, and started off slowly with a mix of dub, hip-hop with the singer showing an ability to change singing styles. Sometimes he rapped in a moody almost menacing whisper and other times he reminded me of Sting.

The band seemed to plod along a bit, there was no great variety in tunes until they played the song which has been released as a single. That was done very well, and the song which they finished on, was more up-tempo and more hip hop than previous song, which was very good, but left me wondering whether the band needed longer than the 30mins they had to really get going, or if given more time the songs would have all started to sound a bit too samey.

In short, they weren't bad, but from the strength of the singles I expected a bit more and was a bit disappointed.

Asian Dub Foundation , have now joined the ranks of the bands I admire the most for their ability to mix up styles to create their own rather than just fuse some styles together for the sake of it.

As you could probably guess dub is one style and is probably the "floor" on which the rest of the sounds sit on, i.e. traditional Asian music, drum 'n' bass, jungle, techno, hip-hop and thrash guitars! This is perhaps a difficult concept to get your head round, buy believe me, it works well, to give a very full-bodied sounds that sounds, "right"! Also The rapper has a very good and powerful voice.

In short this is a band who I would definitely see again, and would urge anyone else to go and see. They certainly got this very crowded venue jumping, and everyone who I spoke to afterwards had thoroughly enjoyed the band.

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