ASIAN DUB FOUNDATION >>> DotMusic March 00

Asian Dub Foundation's emergence as a rock and hellfire drum 'n' bass collective was met in 1996 by championing from the highest quarters.
Bobby Gillespie's initial proclamation that ADF were the best live act in Britain has gone down in musical folklore, providing the band with a springboard they have keenly launched from.
With their new album 'Community Music' just unleashed, and their profile cemented as an exception to the lame rules currently governing the musical zeitgeist, dotmusic met the band at their base in East London.
In video see link - and text form, guitarist Chandrasonic and deck-master Pandit G deliver a lucid and fervent manifesto that suggests ADF are all too alone in carrying the torch of collective activism and musical ingenuity into 2000.
In Part One, direct from the real Community Music home of the band, the pair talk us through ADF's explosive approach to music, the new album and inspiring and mobilising the masses.
In Part Two, which will be posted on Monday, the pair discuss music industry control, talk of their rebel comrades Primal Scream and explain why 'you get Stereophonics for a reason'.

dotmusic: 'How do you feel about the suggestion that ADF sound exactly how Britain in the year 2000 should sound?'

Chandrasonic: '(Laughing) That's a bit extreme. I do wish the norm for the average group would be a bit of a wider berth that it is. Mainstream music is very conservative and you'd think it would be more out there in the year 2000.'

dotmusic: Is ADF's style innovation or just common sense?'

'There's no conscious attempt to be groundbreaking. We just reflect what's going on around us. It's simple.'

dotmusic: 'Phrases such as eclectic and fusion have often been used to describe your sound. That's not something you agree with though is it?'

'If you look at how music has evolved, it makes those phrases meaningless. No-one would call rock and roll or reggae fusion or eclectic, but if you look at the histories of those forms of music and how they were created, then it's about things merging and coming into different environments.'

dotmusic: 'Do you find what you hear day-to-day frustrating?'

'It depends where you listen. If you walk through Brixton, you can hear the latest Ragga beats coming out of cars and that's great. But if you turn on mainstream radio or watch TFI Friday then yeah, it is frustrating.'

dotmusic: 'How has the band developed since 'Rafi's Revenge' and into 'Community Music'?

Pandit G: 'We've developed in a natural, progresssive way. We've played a lot live and matured; in our playing techniques and how we gel. We've sort of gone full circle. We started from 'Community Music' where Dr Das and Chandrasonic taught midi-technology, and now we've created ADFed, which is an educational wing of ADF, out of which has come this amazing group of young lads called Invasion. Hence the album is called 'Community Music'.

dotmusic: 'Lyrically, what sort of themes have influenced the album?'

Chandrasonic: 'The timing of things is always difficult. You might perceive a two-year gap between this one and the last one, but it's not so great for us because we had 40 per cent ready before we finished 'Rafi's Revenge'. 'New Way New Life' reflects a stage of getting somewhere, not getting ignored, hence lyrics like 'opportunity no longer denied'. We're at a different level now.'

dotmusic: 'Do you think such progress means you've actually impacted on other people's lives?'

Pandit G: 'You only have to look at our website and see how many people, from around the world, are writing in and debating about the songs we've written and the feedback we've been getting. At our gigs you get all kinds of people from every walk of life. It very important to open up a debate with our music and its left with the listeners to talk about what we write about.'

dotmusic: 'Ultimately, did ADF form not to try and make people aware of the issues you're discussing but to mobilise them and enable them to have their own voice?'

Chandrasonic: 'The two things are one in us. If the format is exciting and accessible, and gets people on a visceral level as well as a mental level, then it will inspire. This kind of thing is not normally done so well in terms of mobilising people. For example, I could sit people down in a pub and talk about Satpal Ram but it wouldn't have the same effect as having a song that really moves you physically, as well as mentally. So yeah, it has mobilised people. There's a lot of people who hadn't thought about theses things before and are now into it.'

dotmusic: 'How would feel about ADF having a greater commercial impact?'

'We don't have a problem with that. The problem with 'so-called' political groups in the 1980s was that they were really boring and insipid or they only played conscious music to people with the same haircut. The anarchist thing, it had great organisation, strong principles, but they only played to people with the same dress sense. What's the point of that? We have no problem with expanding at all. It's not just our record sales or our personal profiles. It's this whole place.'

something serious going on here. This ain't unsexy, this ain't uncool, this place is producing music that is way ahead of the groups that I'm not supposed to criticise.'

ASIAN DUB FOUNDATION INTERVIEW. PART TWO<>

In the first part of our Asian Dub Foundation interview, the band explained how their sound has developed on the newly unleashed 'Community Music'.
Speaking to dotmusic from their London HQ of the same name, guitarist Chandrasonic and deck-master Pandit G described how the group's influence had grown since the album 'Rafi's Revenge'. In Part Two, we discover that not only is the band's explosive sound, dynamic live agenda and ranting polemic radically different from the competition, but that they have the ideas and articulation to match them.

We also find out that 'you get Stereophonics for a reason' and why the music industry treats the music-buying public 'like idiots'.

dotmusic: 'Is there too much celebrity and hype involved in music nowadays?'

'You can market bad behaviour and drug habits more effectively than the music with hypes. People more concerned with hyping the actual events and it's a bad thing. I'm not against hype and something taking over, but not if the only thing you've got to sell is the hype. There has to be a musical basis.

'You could say that Public Enemy were hyped or Beastie Boys but the music was something new and very powerful. And Punk Rock was a media creature but the music had a statement too. But some indie stuff is hyped for its own sake and has no musical statement that deserves that hype.'

Primal Scream were heavily involved in the original championing of ADF. How do you regard them now?

Pandit G: 'We really respect them. They're activists and have been for a long, long time. It's good to be angry, in a positive way. It's good to express yourself. They're talking about real f***ing issues. It makes sense.'

dotmusic: 'Do you see that elsewhere?'

'The music business dilutes it in such a way. They market it beyond belief. If 2000 is gonna be the era of 'conscious' music, then pop music will swallow it up and market it completely and turn it right over on the other side.'

Chandrasonic: 'I tell you what I think is missing. Really great music has a philosophy. It doesn't have to be explicitly, socially conscious, although I think we'd prefer it that way. It has to have some kind of philosophy that transcends it beyond mere musical product. Hip-hop, reggae even now, has a kind of agenda both soundwise and in theory that is of its own.

'Can had a huge musical philosophy, they had their area and they were about rejecting western, classical European forms, trying to have a spontaneous African approach to rock music, no boundaries, cuts and tape editing. Acid house had a philosophy, no matter how hedonistic or drug orientated, it still had its own power.

'That's what's missing. What is the philosophy of the Stereophonics, or even someone I think is quite good, like the Lo-Fi Allstars? What are they saying that is so special? Interviews are just pure sex, pure drugs, bad behaviour, funny stories from the road.

'Tell me, is there anything else? It's boring. It's a product. Pop music has lost its own sense of importance. Us and the Primals are the only ones that are saying we believe in this and we do this because of this.

'The Primals believe in the social importance of music, even though they have this drug, hedonistic tag which the press hyped-up incredibly, even when it's not happening. But Bobby G and Innes are real music historians and scholars.

'They understand the social importance that music can have and why particular music emerges at a particular time. I get criticised. People say 'why can't you let Stereophonics and Blur get on with it? It's a sound that everybody likes'.

'But it's not as simple as that. All these things happen in a particular context. You get Stereophonics for a reason. It's not just because they're songs you like. They're put in front of you, instead of other things. It's a process of selection. And the music industry would rather see something that they understand and control.

'It's not necessarily something sinister or conspiratorial about it. The music industry just think the majority of the public are idiots, so they give us this sort of music.'

Pandit G: 'It's a widely used template. Something that works. Then do it again. It sells, manufacture it again.'

dotmusic: 'Could you have a role in changing that?'

Chandrasonic: 'Our number one goal isn't necessarily to change the face of the contemporary music scene as we know it. Because of the education projects we do and the long-term vision for that side, that's our number one aim. If we make an impact and alter the origin and generation and the way music is perceived then that'd be great.

'But we're not the exceptions here as is often suggested. People say, you're worthy and you're education and your community work. But you've got to ask why. We've got a sound that a lot of people like, that appears, as you say, to sound like it's from this year. It's more to do with where the music scene looks to the generation of new music.

'This set-up is completely alien to the music press and record companies and yet there's something serious going on here. This ain't unsexy, this ain't uncool, this place is producing music that is way ahead of the groups that I'm not supposed to criticise.'

Ben Gilbert

See the interview videoclips here
Includes:
ADF's New Album 'Community Music'
Asian Dub Foundation In 2000
Influences On ADF, The Bands Impact & Mobilisation