CD reviews: International Observer – Felt

There are hundreds of exponents of electronic dub out there, taking the Jamaican production technique as a template and working up a digital 21st century simulacrum for bourgeois audiences, and which the original exponents might view as being highly ironic.

International Observer can be viewed in this light. It’s basically one white guy and his keyboards, samplers and computers making a very pleasant, easy-on-the-ear version of dub that could provide a perfectly acceptable background for the most discrete of social functions.

But listen between the cracks, delve into what Tom Bailey is really doing with his project, and it’s strikingly different and superior to just about all the other ready examples of this kind of thing. The problem in explaining this to the hardcore dub fan is that International Observer’s music is created with a degree of subtlety almost unheard of in the genre. And while it does contain traces of the original thumbprint and spirit of 1970s Jamaican dub, it’s really something else entirely.

Bailey (who was the mastermind behind ’80s pop phenomenon The Thompson Twins, but don’t hold it against him) is a classically trained pianist who obsessively studies Bach. That perhaps goes some way to explaining why these slices of dub more properly demand to be appreciated as very carefully layered compositions. And while there is a lovely fat bass in every International Observer track, it’s Bailey’s melodic gift that distinguishes these tracks.

While my favourite International Observer album will probably always be their debut, Seen (an introspective release that focused on Bailey’s withdrawal from the pop sphere and his ‘incarceration’ in New Zealand at the time), Felt is also a fine example of the Observer sound.

I would recommend that any listener pop it on repeat play because it takes time to sink in. After a while you start to notice the inherent beauty of these tracks, and the subtle spicing of Indian influence. And those with long memories might appreciate the reworking of that old classic, ‘House Of The Rising Sun’ and more obscure references like the implied tribute to Frank Zappa on’Mudshark Lick’.

International Observer performs here in December.

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