Creation Rebel

The legendary dub masters return

I don’t think anyone would have expected the brilliant UK reggae band Creation Rebel to put out an album in 2023, but here we are and here they are. It’s called Hostile Environment, and it features three of the core members — guitarist “Crucial” Tony Phillips, drummer Charles “Eskimo” Fox, and percussionist/vocalist Veral “Magoo” Rose. It’s produced by Adrian Sherwood, who was behind the boards for all of their classic late ’70s and early ’80s albums.

Band and producer came up together. The original version of the group was known as the Arabs — they backed vocalist Prince Far I on his album Cry Tuff Dub Encounter Chapter 1 and the subsequent tour. That album and the first two Creation Rebel releases, 1978’s Dub From Creation and Close Encounters of the Third World, were released on Sherwood’s Hitrun label, the precursor to On-U Sound. Later, they became the house band for On-U Sound, with members playing on African Head Charge, Dub Syndicate, New Age Steppers, and Singers and Players albums as well as doing their own work.

Several tracks on Close Encounters featured vocals and deeply spiritual lyrics, but Dub From Creation was entirely instrumental and better for it. It starts out relatively conventional, with the title track and “Basic Principals” featuring strong melodies slathered in echo, but by the second half, pieces like “Dub Fusion” and “Liberation” are so fractured and disrupted, they feel like hallucinations. This style persisted on the third album, 1979’s Rebel Vibrations; Sherwood’s mixes mirrored sounds so they appeared in both left and right speakers at once, with deep, throbbing bass running up the middle.

Creation Rebel’s masterpiece (and one of Sherwood’s masterpieces, period) was 1980’s Starship Africa, a genuinely unique album that combines dub with cosmic electronic music almost in the vein of early Tangerine Dream, vocals warped beyond the point of decipherability, layer upon layer of abstract percussion, and deliberate disorientation verging on hostility. Although the tracks are discrete, the sides are labeled “Starship Africa” and “Space Movement,” as though they’re continuous suites, and that’s really how the album should be absorbed, as a journey through the labyrinths of one’s mind.

The group’s next two albums, 1981’s Psychotic Jonkanoo and 1982’s Lows and Highs, brought back conventional reggae song structures and vocals. Psychotic Jonkanoo retained some of the disorienting, arty qualities of their earlier work; it included “Chatti Mouth/Threat to Creation” from a split LP they did with the New Age Steppers, and John Lydon can be faintly heard delivering backing vocals on “Mother Don’t Cry.” Lows and Highs, by contrast, was practically a lovers rock album, smooth as silk and only intermittently weird. The nearly 11-minute “Rubber Skirts (Pts. 1, 2 & 3)” is worth hearing, though.

I don’t know why Creation Rebel stopped putting out records after the ’80s, but their last release was the cassette-only Return From Space on the short-lived (only two releases on Discogs) RCR label, sold at live shows in 1984 and 1985.

Hostile Environment is primarily a vocal album, with some interesting surprises. Most of the singing and chanting is done by Fox and Rose, but legendary toaster Daddy Freddy pops up on one track, and two feature ghost vocals, pulled from archival tapes, by Prince Far I, who died in 1983. There are guest instrumentalists, too; “Stonebridge Warrior” features Patrick and Henry Tenyue on trumpet and trombone, respectively, and saxophonist Megumi Mesaku. Keyboardist Cyrus Richards, who’s worked with Horace Andy, plays piano and organ throughout, and Kenton “Fish” Brown, whose credits go back to the ’80s, is on bass. Two tracks, “This Thinking Feeling” and “Whatever It Takes,” add legendary reggae saxophonist Dean Fraser to the band.

The lyrics are spiritually and politically engaged; the album’s title is a reference to a 2012 press quote from former UK prime minister Theresa May, who told the right-wing newspaper the Daily Telegraph, “The aim is to create here in Britain a really hostile environment for illegal migration.” The resulting Hostile Environment Policy (yes, it was literally called that) was labeled inhumane, ineffective, and unlawful, and contributed to a general atmosphere of xenophobia in the UK. Many people were unlawfully deported, fired, or denied health care despite being born British subjects, in what became known as the Windrush scandal.

As always with Creation Rebel, though, the instrumental music is extraordinarily powerful, too. “That’s More Like It,” “Jubilee Clock,” and “Off the Spectrum” allow Sherwood to run wild at the mixing board, with Phillips’ stinging guitar, Brown’s miles-deep bass, and some surprisingly jazzy piano from Richards floating in an amniotic sac of echo, reverb, and sci-fi sound effects. Some tracks, like “Whatever It Takes” (on which Magoo delivers a hoarse, impassioned vocal), have a vintage roots reggae feel, while others, like “Salutation Gardens,” verge on the industrial trip-hop of Tackhead. “The Peoples’ Sound (Tribute to Daddy Vego),” shouts out a revered London sound system operator and has an almost psychedelic rock sound.

Adrian Sherwood has been working with legends recently, bringing Horace Andy and African Head Charge up from the depths and showing that they haven’t lost a step, despite being away for years in some cases. This new Creation Rebel album is one of his most startling acts of resurrection, though, as it’s been 40 years since they were last heard from. It’s incredible to have them back, and this album sits comfortably alongside their classic ’80s records, most of which are available via the On-U Sound Bandcamp page. It would be great to see their entire catalog reissued — Close Encounters of the Third World, Lows and Highs and Return From Space have all been out of print for decades. But, you know, I’m still waiting for a remastered compilation of the early Tackhead 12” singles, so I won’t hold my breath.

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Before I go: My review of the 21CD Deutsche Grammophon box (the catalyst for my interview with Kyle Gann, which ran in this newsletter two weeks ago) has been published. Check it out, won’t you?

Also: AvantMusicNews published a really nice review of Diego Caicedo’s Seis Amorfismos, which is out next week. (Get your copy now!) They say, “[Caicedo’s] technique derives from heavy metal, with the requisite distorted chording and use of sculpted feedback. But his playing comes across as more open-ended than most with improvised passages in between the written sections. But where the album truly differentiates itself is with the remaining instrumentation — a death metal vocalist and a string quartet…While the guitar is in your face, the strings subtly pull at the emotions to create a sense of foreboding through use of extended techniques and short droning motifs.” Read the whole thing.

That’s it for now. See you next week!