Search - International Observer :: Felt

Felt, the new album by renowned dub producer International Observer is the third in a series of releases named after senses. Like albums Seen (2002) and Heard (2005) - which reviewers have called `lush', `engaging', and `languorous' - the songs on Felt require superlatives to describe. An altogether deeper excursion into bass than its predecessors, this is music to transport you around the world. From the smoking dancehalls of South London and the crowded streets of India, to the wide open spaces of New Zealand/Aotearoa - each has had an influence on Felt. For musician, producer, film-maker and artist Tom Bailey, International Observer is the creative outlet which has allowed him to step outside the 80's synth-pop paradigm inhabited by his former group, The Thompson Twins. Drawing on his exposure to dancehall culture in South London in the late 70's, along with later stints working with reggae legends Sly & Robbie and Lee Perry, as International Observer, Tom crafts luscious soundscapes that loop through time and space to etch their own groove on the vast global disc that dub has become in 2009. The album begins with `House of the Rising Dub', which features Tom singing a disarmingly catchy version of the famous song that - peppered with International Observer's trademark horns - bears only a passing resemblance to the original. For Tom, making dub music is "the ability to deconstruct and reinterpret a text so that you thought it was one thing and suddenly it becomes another. It is a kind of magical process which couldn't have happened without certain technologies and mindsets," he says. Tom believes that it is difficult to make conservative dub. "That's partly because there's no lead vocalist, there's no fronts-person. The music itself is the voice rather than the people who are doing it. And in that way it stays underground. You can't become world famous for mixing a dub track - it just doesn't happen." As such, vocals are at a minimum on Felt, and when there, they are transformed with sinuous layers of echo, delay, melody, and all things dub-a-tronic to become another instrument in the vast musical world of the International Observer. With evocative names such as `Binman Dub', `Abode of the Setting Moon', and `Lampedusa' (inspired by the refugees held in camps on the Italian island of the same name), each track on Felt is a masterpiece in its own right. As Tom understands it, dub is about hearing things differently: "To take something familiar but to put a spin on it that refreshes it, that re-enlightens it. And I think that's an admission on some kind of fundamental level that life is like that - you know, that there are only so many stories. We're all basically leading similar lives at the core of our experience, and yet we put our own little licks and twists on those things to make it personal, to make it fresh and interesting." With a whole range of senses left to explore musically, International Observer looks set to be reworking his take on dub for some time yet. Felt is available now through Dubmission Records.