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Zion Gates
Artist: Solomon Jabby
Label: Solomon Jabby Records (self-released)
URLs: http://www.solomonjabby.com, 

Reggae has been a hard enough sell to both (mostly) Euromerican contemporary Christian and (largely) Afrimerican soul-gospel audiences in the U.S. Consider then, that the sophomore dub albums by long-running band Christafari and solo studio whiz Solomon Jabby are works for the hardest core of the genre fans, absent of any aspirations of getting any stylistic slummers to say "mon!" in a faux patois.

Though it has influenced popular music for over two decades, dub should probably be explained here to the uninitiated. Dub happens when a completed studio-recorded track is manipulated after the fact in ways that make it a wholly different sonic journey, albeit with recognizable elements of the original work. Vocals, bass lines, percussion and instrumentation carrying melody lines drop in and out of the mix, recurring seemingly at random with echo, filtering, phasing and backward tape manipulation. If guitars with wah-wah pedals and whammy bars played by white kids in the latter half of the '60s created psychedelic music intended for love-ins and chemically-enhanced navel gazing, Jamaican musicians and producers innovated a variety of psychedelia that utilized the studio control booth. As much for dancing to the country's mobile truck DJ sound systems as it was for recreational ingestion of mind-altering substances, it would create ripples felt throughout popular music the world over.

As with the best psych rock, however, the best dub can create trips without drugs. Some dub, as is the case of Solomon, comes about from tinkering with elements unrelated to any previous recording. His woofer-rattling, organic low end, ominous melodica, sinuous sax and chordal organ sounds to have been hijacked from early '70s Trojan Records B-sides. Caucasian dreadlocked Georgian Solomon Jabby's second long-player, Zion Gates pays homage to dub of the past by recreating it for tracks that praise God in their spaceyness.

Jabby even re-dubs a dub. "Run Come Purify"'s few lyrics trade make for a minor key praise and worship chorus rich in Biblical metaphor. "Run Come Dub" dilutes an already minimal work into a holy haze of effects.

The best title of the lot goes to "Spiritual Kung Fu (Sword Of The Spirit)," an aptly rubbery exercise in aural slashing about. Listen to Gates all the way through for the cow Jabby lassoed into his studio (or so it sounds). Eccentric dub controllers such as Lee "Scratch" Perry may have nothing on Jabby for that bovine touch.

Christafari's on their second dub plate, too. Difference is that Mark Mohr and Company have based theirs on previously recorded work. Gravitational Dub, as fans might guess, reprises numbers originally heard on '04's Gravity. What gives with Mohr prefacing his band's name with his personal moniker, much less his fascination with trains and railroads in the graphics here, is anyone's guess.

Just like the album on which this one's based, Gravitational revels in Mohr giving his favorite music a forward push. Dizzyingly speedy drum&bass beatwork, flute, mandolin, found voices extolling Christ and DJ scratching add to the bag of sonic elements Jabby would use in his compositions. Mohr has added has added to, not just reconstructed, his source material.

The lyrics that make C-fari a profoundly Christian reggae act remain in enough evidence to make this a distinctly Christian listening experience. Mohr's better half, Avion Blackman, makes her scriptural evocations especially shine on pieces such as "Hidden DUB" and "Let The Dub of God" (the only time here when that word isn't fully capitalized). As a matter of course, Mohr's own raggamuffin deejay toasting/chatting is all over the place, though he has toned down on the Jamaican patois oft incomprehensible to ears on this side of the Caribbean.

To hear what Jabby would do in evolving his sound or Mohr in dirtying his up some could be revelatory. Both offer different, organic takes on a (sub)genre that has reverberated throughout the pop music that it has followed. In these cases, they are righteous reverberations indeed.

Jamie Lee Rake    May 24, 2005