Wrestling with grief and loss, as the increasingly awful news of the day infects mind, body and soul, dub visionary Adrian Sherwood – like many – must feel as if he truly is witnessing The Collapse of Everything. Buried in a lyric from a Mark Stewart song, the late Pop Group auteur a friend of Sherwood’s, the line now transformed into an LP title feels especially, and hopelessly, prescient.
All is not lost, though, as Sherwood’s transportive solo album – his first since 2012 – is a paradise of cinematic wonder and immersive experimentalism, where imaginative and ambitious world-building goes on without bureaucratic intrusion and escape is encouraged. Free to roam across genres, this time as a musician/artist, rather than a producer or the shaman of the well-respected On-U Sound label, Sherwood blithely ignores “no trespassing” signs, carefully constructing alternate realities, like the dark and dreamy “Spaghetti Best Western,” woozily hallucinating about Ennio Morricone, softly jangling spurs and sinister cowboy spirits haunting a desert ghost town. It’s easy to feel unmoored in Sherwood’s universes.
Looking to the Far East, a shuffling “Hiroshima Dub Match” beats distractedly on sheets of tin and shakes rusty chimes, enticing strangers with its lazy, exotic disinterest. Echoey shots go off in the distance and birds of unknown species – perhaps from prehistoric times – squawk helplessly, a storm is brewing somewhere, perhaps promising a monsoon, and little portals of trippy, acid blazes enthrall. Yearning for sophistication, Sherwood – once a member of hip-hop trailblazers Tackhead, as well the creative force behind his own auspicious and innovative debut LP Never Trust a Hippy?, endorsed by Peter Gabriel’s Real World label – also wades into a jazzy, watery “Body Roll” to swim in a blue velvet cove of rich piano chords, smooth saxophone and undulating percussion, surrounded by fluttering flute sounds and spacey atmospherics that also envelope the lurching, softly buoyant, celestial title track.
Anchored by deep, slowly writhing grooves, the kind of diverse rhythmic rumblings and surges associated with dub that Sherwood’s been exploring for years, The Collapse of Everything is a dense aural menagerie, teeming with natural and synthetic beauty. Working with different motifs, there is a painterly, often abstract quality to Sherwood’s work, collages pieced together seamlessly in the jazz-dub fusion of “Dub Inspector” – sultry horns spreading warmth – and the otherworldly, reverberating odyssey into the unknown “The Well is Poisoned (Dub),” the strict drumming a little trashy and more primal than expected.
It’s spiritual jazz of sorts, coming from a different messenger, as the slinky closer “The Grand Designer” – rich and velvety, splashed with Spanish flavor and bathed in astral projection – brings some psychedelic funk, too. Sherwood has a master plan, and this one is a dub tour de force.
