When Asian Dub Foundation played a London date just over a month prior to the release of this album, they confidently performed almost all of the new tracks collected here. The crowd's response was testimony to the incredible quality of this set. From enraged fiery polemic through rootsy sing-jay styles and pounding, stoned dub, 'Community Music' is a taught lesson in the making of a contemporary album.
Unlike some of the group's peers, Asian Dub Foundation has a very clear agenda. Theirs is an articulate rage and consequently raises itself above the sheer energy of white noise to develop a complex tapestry of world rhythms from which they hang their righteous political indignation.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the track that anchors the middle of this album, 'Crash', an impassioned skank decrying the false 'aid' offered by the IMF's "international monetary foul play." As the track develops from skipping ska riddims, Deedar announces that, if "it's de end of history – we say it's just the beginning." The new global crash is coming, announced by Chandrasonic's lurching and thrashing guitar and an assault of breakbeats hard and funky enough to wash away every last trace of Fabio's liquid funk. It's the sound of the WTO protest in Seattle storming the building and throwing a pair of running shoes in the boss' face.
The band's musical coherence is often found at its peak in some of the instrumental tracks, 'Taa Deem', for instance, recalls the exciting sound system fusion of the group's awesome debut, 'Facts And Fictions', from which they also include a new version of 'Rebel Warrior'. 'Scaling New Heights', the album's closing track, and a mesmerising finale at the aforementioned gig, is breathtaking in its accomplishment and perfect, chunky structure.
On some of the strongest vocal tracks, 'New Way, New Life' and 'Collective Mode', Deedar's vocal swings with the melodic chant of an obvious influence, Jamaican Sing-Jay Sizzla. The melodic harmonies speak of a music of collective resistance, not isolated struggle. However, as this album confirms, ADF are all too alone in their field and desperately in need of fellow fighters.
by James Poletti