NME 4.April 1998

More radical than Chumbawumba(?!), more Beatles-y than Oasis and more bass than you've ever rumbled your guts too, ASIAN DUB FOUNDATION are more than just a hatful of holler...

"Got any cocaine?" a girl asks Dr Das of Asian Dub Foundation. "Er, no, sorry." "Yes you have," she snaps, "you must have." "We don't do cocaine in this band," he replies. "Oh come on, you can't have that much energy without being on something." Oh well, easy mistake to make. See, our friend made the simple error of assuming the incendiary buzz and splenetic energy of an Asian Dub Foundation gig could only be created in a laboratory by mad criminals and sold for more than its weight in gold.

And if anyone could bottle the essence of this band, they might well do just that.

History has taught music journalists everywhere never to call anything 'The Future Of Rock'n'roll', but you'd be hard pressed to find a better example of its present incarnation. At their best ADF do for jungle and dub what Public Enemy did for hip-hop and what The Specials did for ska haul it blazing into the mainstream across musical, cultural and racial divides without diluting its spirit, style or message but actually concentrating it for maximum impact. And it's beautiful to watch. They may not prove to have the same kind of effect on planet pop as the luminaries mentioned above but, right here, right now, they seem like the most important band in Britain.

You join us in ADF's natural habitat, a steaming, sweat- drenched cauldron of communal vibes, somewhere between a late-'70s punk gig, a late-'80s rave and a late-'90s jungle club. The bass is making your veins bulge and your guts rumble. The frantic breakbeats are mashing your brains and blistering your feet, the madly percussive guitar lines and stream-of-black- consciousness rhymes are making your head spin trying to absorb it all in one go and the passion is sending shivers down your spine the like of which you've only experienced at the greatest gigs, when you experience a rock'n'roll epiphany. Asian Dub Foundation have arrived and they have come to save the world from sin, injustice and prog rock. So from where, pray, have these desperados sprung? The war-torn streets of London's urban nightmare? The last freedom joyride out of nowhere city? Well, actually a 'community music' workshop. Hmmm.

"In the first interview we ever did with NME," recalls Das, "the journalist says, 'Workshops? That's not very sexy, is it?' Well I'm sorry, but I think it's seriously sexy. We've heard more great stuff from doing community music projects compared to most of the bands that are in NME. If you give people the means of expression, they come up with some amazing stuff because they come from the grass roots, they're not typical 'musicians'." Dr Das was a tutor at Southwark Community Music when he joined programmer/DJ Pandit G to form ADF, soon joined by impossibly young- looking rap firebrand Master D, guitarist Chandrasonic and keyboard player Sun-J. But the noise they produce is about as far from any cold, calculated ideas of multicultural music 'projects' as it's possible to get. And unlike the school of 1993 eclecticists who gamely tried to fuse rock, rap and dub, they come from a dance and ethnic music background, rather than being rockers dabbling in clumsy pursuit of the groove.

"Most guitarists don't know how to play over drum'n'bass," reckons Chandrasonic. "They use it as a focus rather than as a rhythm thing and it spoils the groove. With us it's the bass that's the thing." Maybe it's that approach that makes tunes like 'Naxalite', or new single 'Buzzin" sound like drum'n'bass with punk attitude, hip-hop consciousness and pop sensibility. Or maybe not... "We've always resisted the 'punk' label," says Pandit, "because sonically we sound nothing like that. But if punk means anti-muso, DIY grass- roots vibes and wanting to be an alternative to Fleetwood Mac and boring, self-indulgent music, then we are punk, taking on punk's unfinished business." "From that era I'd say we had most in common with the 2- Tone scene," offers Das. "Jerry Dammers started The Specials as a collective which, like us, came out of the community."

"We went on tour with the Primals," recounts Chandra, "and they had a laminate with a picture of Sid Vicious on. And Deedar (Master D) says to Bobby Gillespie, 'Who's that?' He's from a generation who don't know what punk is."

For kids like Deedar, jungle was their punk. And since it's been subtley reinvented as 'drum'n'bass', it's lost the plot big style.

"Drum'n'bass is shit now," he spits. "It's been techno-ised, just as house was - lost the energy, the rawness."

Das: "The name says it all. Calling jungle 'drum'n'bass' was an attempt to civilise it. The name 'jungle' was a deliberate appropriation of a racist term, making it into a positive thing. Then white liberals say you can't call it that any more and coincidentally the ragga elements and the energy get taken out and it all goes up its own arse."

Chandrasonic: "We'll always be junglists. The name comes from Bob Marley's 'Concrete Jungle', it's about sound systems in the inner cities. But a lot of drum'n'bass is just prog rock now."

Das: "When they use the word 'intelligent jungle' I hate it; to me it just means 'posh jungle'. The 'intelligent' types think to make something better you have to strip out all the rawness, energy and guts. And now it's back to introspective, indulgent psychobollocks. That's not what jungle's about."

This is one of a veritable armoury of axes Asian Dub Foundation have to grind given half the chance. We stumble across another when we mention a vague notion of Asian music increasingly breaking through to the mainstream...

"Hang on," says Pandit, "where exactly? Cornershop, sure, but who else? The point is there have always been struggling Asian musicians and ones who sell a lot of cassettes in the Asian community. It's just now some people have chosen to listen to it."

"This 'new Asian cool' thing sounds suspicious to me," says Das. "I can't help thinking of world music and Sunday broadsheet supplements. They almost see it as charity, like the way Real World (Peter Gabriel and friends' project to promote world music) say, 'Here, poor Third World person, here's a 48-track studio, forget your harmoniums, here's a digital modelling keyboard,' or something, and it sieves out the soul of the music."

"People still have all these cliched ideas about Asian music," says Chandrasonic. "Seeing someone like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was pure excitement, madness, bringing people to a frenzy. But it's marketed to middle-class hippies as laid-back joss stick music. We remixed him, took a tune note for note and doubled up on guitar and bass, as if to say, 'This is serious punk music that originated 1,000 years ago, the roots of qawwali.'"

"It divided people," says Das. "They either thought it was great or like a certain weekly magazine, 'They insult the great meditative and spiritual qualities of this music'. Well, they insult us by assuming all Indian music is meditative or spiritual. That's like some bollocks Kula Shaker idea of Asian music."

And if it's not world music lovers expressing dismay at ADF's interpretation of traditional musical forms, it's The Church Of Dub.

"Yeah, people have a very rigid idea of what 'dub' is, like it's one kind of echo or sornething. But it's about experimentation, like Lee Perry fucking up a four-track studio to make sounds it's not designed for. We're about that kind of experimentation, but it's populist and accessible as well. It's never just for Wire readers."

Chandrasonic: "The words 'innovative and experimental' have come to mean this retro ghetto of self-indulgence, middle-class and snobbish. We want to reclaim the experimental tradition and make it exciting again."

And where better to start than on the world-famous NME Bratbus Tour? Time to show those indie kids some Demolition Dub. Chandrasonic: "A lot of indie kids haven't heard bass. Not just jungle, ragga or dub, but bass in general. They haven't heard what it can do!" Das: "There were a lot of people heading for the toilets..."

Chandrasonic: "In indie they think only guitar and vocals can convey emotion. The Smiths took the bass out of rock music. Mani from the Roses was good, Steven Hanley of The Fall is good, but most indie kids are missing out. And even big beat stuff now is just programmed indie - where's the bass?

"Guitar music has suffered for being so traditional. I mean, Oasis think they're the new Beatles. They may imitate them sonically, but that's all. We've got more in common with The Beatles than Oasis have, because just as The Beatles played R&B and Motown then took it somewhere else, we take dub musical traditions and push back the barriers of where it can go. Oasis will never do anything like that."

Asian Dub Foundation's aesthetic has as much in common with a rock band kicking out the jams as a DJ cutting up rough in a dance club. They look fantastic as a rock band, but at the same time could just as well be leaping around at the youth club disco. Master D is pure junglist raggamuffin energy, Dr Das is all glowering cheekbones and skinhead nonchalance, Chandrasonic is the rangy, gawky oddball rocker and Pandit G is the boffin DJ in the background. Even Sun-J's arms-flailing dance steps have an innocent charm.

This means you can relate to their style whether you're used to live bands or anonymous DJs, guitar rock or jungle. And slowly but surely, the audiences are starting to reflect that.

"What's happening," says Pandit, "is that the apartheid you used to have at gigs is being broken down. It's still mostly white NME reader types, but you get clusters of Asians and clusters of Afro-Caribbeans, and by the end of the gig they're all mixed up. In the past Asians would think, 'Why would we want to go to this indie club?' it was all segregated. I can see why because I went to a house night at a west London club recently and they wouldn't let us in, saying we weren't dressed for it. My mate's in this £300 Motor King jacket and they're letting loads of scruffy students in. It's bollocks. If that's in supposedly multicultural west London, what hope is there for races to mix at gigs? That's why we want to do for Asian people what 2-Tone did for Afro-Caribbeans and whites getting mixed crowds."

YOU'VE HAD TOO MUCH spliff, mate," Chandrasonic tells Master D as he lights up another.

"No I haven't, it takes me at least six to get out of it. I never get stoned before a gig, I just need a couple to get focussed."

Call me naive, but I can't quite equate ADF's speeding onstage buzz with a drug famous for it's 'relaxing' properties.

"Nah, mate, it's only skunk that sends you to sleep," explains Deedar. "If you smoke every day it focuses you. Dub and dope have always gone together."

"Only a couple of us smoke, and only a couple drink," says Chandrasonic. "But we all stay away from cocaine, 'cos it turns people into wankers. It gives you bad attitude. If we walked into Community Music with any attitude they'd just throw our gear out of the window. And it makes for shit music."

Far be it from ADF to spend much time sat on their arses stoned, mind. New single 'Buzzin" is somewhat representative of a life's-too-short philosophy, inspired by a common household fly...

"I was sitting at home with Das," says Deedar, "and there's this fly buzzing around the room, and he says to me, 'You know flies only live an average of four days?' And it just made me think that's why they're so mad buzzing around so fast. And I'm a bit like that, want to do everything while I'm young. Like the lyric says, 'Can't live my life with no rhythm or rhyme/Got to organise my time'."

Wise words, mate. And all the more poignant when you think about a man like Satpal Ram, the friend of the band who has been in jail for 12 years for killing a racist attacker in self-defence. When you think about the fate of a man like him, it makes you value your freedom and opportunities in life all the more.

ADF have a petition at every gig campaigning for his release, and the number of signatures is rapidly approaching 10,000. But it's when you hear the explosive righteous ire of the last single, 'Free Satpal Ram' that your heart really begins to pound. It's the highlight of the live set both nights we see them, in Nottingham and Leeds, but that's not necessarily just because of its subject matter. See, it's the nearest ADF get to rock music and its simple gut impact is bound to be the most immediate moment of their set. For this band, though, politics isn't something to dabble in when a cause arises and it's not just about railing about injustice. It's the politics of dancing, the politics of feeling good and making the most of yourself, your friends, your family and your community. "People think politics is about suits in Westminster," says Chandrasonic. "But it just comes down to wanting to make a better life for yourself and your community."

"Music can put issues across," reckons Pandit. "But you've got to take the opportunity to state what you stand for. Chumbawamba had the chance to put their point across to John Prescott at the Brits, but instead they did something naff and it just became a publicity stunt. Prescott came out of it with more sympathy. If we'd seen Prescott we'd have asked him what they're doing about Satpal Ram's case or to build community music."

And as if more proof were needed of the Labour government's betrayal of the people they were put into power to serve, the Asian community is still waiting to see some returns for their loyalty.

"People like Clare Short supported the Satpal Ram campaign," says Pandit, "but now they're in government they've dropped it, 'cos they're told they'll get deselected if they don't follow the party line. The race agenda was taken out of New Labour's aims in 1995. And as for the cultural side of things, the Lottery is just a joke. It's a tax on the poor. And the whole system for raising money for the arts is corrupt, based on backhanders. We put in a bid for C4million for a purpose built community music centre, and got rejected, while stuff like the Opera House and the fucking Millennium Dome get hundreds of millions."

Meanwhile, in the wake of the uproar about Welfare To Work, ADF point out that just giving musicians dole money is not a solution in itself.

"Just giving people money is no use," reckons Pandit, "if they haven't got access to the means of making music. You need to promote community projects like ours or the only people making music will be kids rich enough to afford gear and studios."

"It shouldn't be this middle-class charity thing," adds Chandrasonic, "it should just be a case of making the resources available. That's how the best music comes, from grass-roots creativity."

Of course, all this idealism means the square root of nish if you can't put it into practise, and that's what's so exciting about Asian Dub Foundation. All those high-minded ideas about mixing and matching musical sub-genres and sub- cultures being the only way forward in these 'nothing is original' times are being realised without need for patronising theory. The second night we see them, in Leeds, ADF are twice as good again as the previous night, impossibly vital, speeding on timeless rock'n'roll buzz, driven by an urge to push the beat to the next energy level, the bass through your face and a brilliantly life-affirming philosophy into the hearts and minds of anyone who's ready to listen.

In case you'd forgotten what excited you about music in the first place, concluded that the drugs don't work, and treated it as just a very personal, private accompaniment to your delicate musings on love and death, let ADF ram-raid your bedroom and drag your soul back into the real world. Because the community of music is a fantastic place to be.

Qawwali bears:
Johnny Cigarettes (words)
Roger Sargent (photos)