COMING FULL CIRCLE

It’s been nearly two decades since Salmonella Dub surfaced across the Tasman with an innovative and mischievous style. The group’s guitarist, Andrew Penman, explains how the band is now attempting to revert back to the basics that established their unique sound.

“At times you sort of get into a formula, which we’re actually trying to break out of with the next round of recording. Over the last two or three albums we’ve all had the luxury of little home studios, which has of course meant that everyone has had the producer hat on at times. Then you end up with all these different ideas of how things should go. This process has meant a whole lot of stuff has fallen by the wayside, which consequently we’re trying to represent with the ‘Freak Controller Madness’ release at the moment.

“The problem I guess with the digital age is that the choices are unlimited. Although digital technology has allowed us to produce stuff without being in the same room, having spread out over the years has resulted in a loss of that x-factor of the live unit, which is what we were always about.

“Over the last few albums what’s tended to happen is that we’ll finish recording without actually having played through the whole album together. Then we’ll take it out on the road and by the end of the tour probably find that there are one or two tracks that stick and the rest get dropped. So with our twentieth anniversary coming up next year, and the sudden realisation of the pitfalls in the way we’ve been doing things, the plan is to get together for a space of time to develop the ideas as a group in the same room. That way we’ll nut things out as a live unit and in the process become emotionally involved together with what we’re doing arrangement-wise, rather than individually. Which is what we used to do – so we’ve pretty much gone full circle.”

In terms of sound, Salmonella Dub have made a preemptive attempt to circle back to their roots with ‘Freak Controller’, something Andrew admits was intentional after the digital age had such an effect on their previous release, ‘Heal Me’.

“The idea was to try and make more of a live album. ‘Heal Me’ for us was an interesting process, and probably the culmination of everything I’ve just explained. David Harrow was producing it from LA and we haven’t seen him since ‘Killervision’, which was eight years before, so the whole thing was done online. Plus we’d gone through quite a change in what we were doing – Tiki (Taane) had gone off to do his solo albums – and we were very keen to forge ahead with the core line-up.

“My partner and I had just had our boy, so I was pretty much an at-home Dad and spending most of my day in the studio. Our drummer Dave, who does all the vocals, was coming backwards and forwards and it was actually quite a good creative process. But obviously the big flaw was that our producer was in LA. We were coming up with way too much stuff for the poor guy to wade through – at times there were up to 100 tracks running in each session. Plus Dave was getting carried away, almost going Crosby, Stills and Nash on the vocals. There would be eight or nine counter harmonies on things, which of course if you try to play live it’s like ‘Oh, that’s not gonna work is it?’ Great ideas, but a little bit flawed when it came to delivery.”

For Salmonella Dub, delivering on stage is possibly the most important aspect of their musical process, given that live shows are where dub and reggae have the most impact for listeners.
“First and foremost it’s about the bass. With a bigger rig and a nicer room, or preferably outdoors if you have a nice amphitheatre, you can really maximise that. But it’s also about the rhythms. As a young kid I was brought up getting wacked across the knuckles by an old lady teaching me piano. Then I had the luxury of working with a big jazz band, and there was this old guy who used to yell at me ‘Don’t bloody read that music, feel it! It isn’t the notes you play it’s the gaps between them!’ And that’s really what it’s about with dub. It’s about creating the space to be able to infer things that may not be there.”

Often hailed as innovators and pioneers of the dub sound, Andrew admits they’ve never felt the pressure of such labels given that it all began as a bit of fun.
“Although we had a bit of arrogance about our music, back when we started it was all very tongue-in-cheek. There wasn’t anything like what we were doing around us at the time – we started among what was very much a grunge rock scene. Dance music back then was frowned upon a bit. If we wanted to play a dance gig we would have to play at a trance party, otherwise we were playing rock gigs with bands like Shihad.

“The exciting thing is that over the course of the last ten years in particular, both Australia and New Zealand have developed this emerging voice that is very roots orientated, across many different genres from dub to dubstep and drum & bass, to hip hop – everything goes.”

Experienced travellers at the international level, Andrew has noticed that while receptive to roots music, places such as Europe lack the emergence of such a voice, something he attributes to our island homes.

“People have asked over the years why New Zealand and Australia are so receptive to reggae or dub. I think it’s an island thing – being by the sea. The Pacific Islander culture has embraced it, particularly with Jamaica and the whole history behind it that has shaped that style of music. Also on the flipside in New Zealand you’ve got the punk scene that really influenced it. There’s a whole white boy, punk, digi-dub, reggae ethic that’s crossed over as well, and it’s really melded together. I guess the big melting pot for that was drum & bass and dubstep.”

Salmonella Dub play The Coolangatta Hotel October 14 and the Hi-Fi October 15.