Survival & Resistance (Bonus Track Version)

An accomplished musical shape-shifter, Adrian Sherwood has produced music with the stylistic restlessness of post-punk, the willful dissonance of musique concrète, and the visceral intensity of ragga, jungle, and drum and bass. This eclecticism comes naturally to Sherwood, as amply demonstrated on Survival & Resistance. Here, he uses dub’s deconstructionist toolkit to meld and tweak a breathtaking variety of sounds, from foreboding jazz accents to digital white noise. Sherwood has characterized this release as his response to Britain’s progressively deepening economic crisis, as well as to the civil unrest that wracked London in the summer of 2011—but the connection between these moody, largely instrumental soundscapes and contemporary British politics remains fairly abstract. When voices do emerge—as on the nocturnal trip-hop workout “We Flick the Switch”—they refrain from specifics, instead employing the sort of lofty Rastafarian symbolism that will be instantly familiar to reggae heads. Survival & Resistance gives listeners the chance to hear a pioneer of the dub avant-garde operating at the peak of his abilities.