(Valve/Warner)

Weed-loving Tokyo space-dub cowboys Audio Active first emerged back in 1993 with their debut album ‘Audio Active’, produced and released by UK dubmaster Adrian Sherwood through his On-U Sound label. While many listeners may know them best for their break-out 1994 single ‘Free The Marijuana’ (re-released in remixed form featuring a vocal from reggae legend Bim Sherman), throughout the last decade, Audio Active have released a steady flow of new albums which have seen them rise to the cream of Japan’s thriving dub scene alongside the likes of Dry And Heavy. In the wake of 1999’s ‘Return Of The Red I’, Audio Active spent the next year performing at the Tibetan Freedom Concert as well as Japan’s Fuji Rock Festival, as well as touring through Australia as guests of Valve labelmates Regurgitator. During 2001, the release of Audio Active’s most recent (and fifth) album ‘Spaced Dolls’ was followed by the band throwing a free Happer’s (Japanese slang for dope-smokers) Allstars event in Tokyo’s Yoyogi Park, which attracted more than 10,000 fans.

At this point, it’s obvious that Audio Active are an arena-filling proposition in their native Japan, and while they’ve certainly had some success in crossing over to the wider-international market (a factor no doubt aided by the fact that many of their lyrics are sung in English), I must admit to being somewhat surprised that during their prolific career they’ve haven’t received the same sorts of media attention and plaudits as other similar forward-thinking dub-influenced outfits such as Asian Dub Foundation. Indeed, while other Japanese outfits that they’ve been frequently compared to such as Dry And Heavy have generally focussed on a more ‘classic’ configuration of dub reggae that often restricts the electronics to dub-delay and keyboards, during their career Audio Active have consistently pushed the dub-envelope forward, throwing in mutant electronics, breakbeats and overdriven rock guitars to create a blend that sits somewhere between Bad Brains, Tackhead and the Mad Professor. Now, the local emergence of Audio Active’s latest (sixth) album ‘Back To The Stoned Age’ (originally released late last year on Japanese label Beat Records) signals these Tokyo space-happers have started firing up their bongs again, three years after the release of ‘Space Dolls’, which marked a distinct move away from herbally-minded song titles, while also moving towards more epic, ten-minute-plus dub voyages.

Opening track ‘Weed Back’ kicks open with bottomless electronic bass and squealing guitar feedback before shifting into overdriven rock guitar riffs and squealing bursts of guitar squall that plod inexorably alongside vast dubbed-out drums, sonar-like pings and eerie keyboards, suggesting a meeting point somewhere between Salmonella Dub and dark ‘Mezzanine-era’ Massive Attack, leading into ‘Suckers’, which introduces distorted dub MC vocals (“We’re doobie-pot men / Short-haired suckers’) over a low-slung hiphop groove, before building up into a rock-guitar infused skank-stomp propelled forward by a thick sinuous bass line and trademark On-U Sound vast dub drop-outs. ‘Stoned Age’ ventures into chilled-out bottomless instrumental dub, with melancholy synth-strings providing an epic counterpoint for some crystalline shimmering keyboards that build up into a psychedelic starwash of sound, while ‘Frozen Head’ places a shuffling programmed dub-reggae beat beneath pinging electronic events, cascading Black Ark keyboards and vast wobbling bass that provides the vast heartbeat behind the disoriented-sounding heavily-effected vocals (“The scene of billions of beads of light coming and going / Is this the beginning or the end?”).

‘The Red Line District’ shifts things towards steel-plate hard industrial-tinged dub, with all manner of crashing percussive sounds, ripples and buzzing synths ricocheting back and forth through the mix, alongside glacial-sounding synth pads, ripping timestretching and eerie, vaguely Middle-Eastern mournful-sounding horns, alongside a relentless bassline that once again calls to mind comparisons to later-period Massive Attack. ‘Electrick Elves’ ventures towards groovy electro, with burbling colourful synth tones riding alongside crisp shuffling kicks and snares, while looped samples of Japanese children and what sounds like a bicycle bell slide back and forth around breakdance beats and flaring cymbals, before ‘Intelligent Chimpanzees’ gets into some of the more political-tinged lyrical territory Audio Active have explored before on tracks such as ‘Happy Shopper’, with a lyrical refrain exploring the downfalls of human ‘intelligence’ (“We’re just a kind of monkey”) over loping programmed beats, flanging synths and deep bass rumbles, in one of this album’s most immediate and catchy vocal reggae-oriented moments.

‘Time Shock’ meanwhile opens with brooding, cinematic sounding strings and icy keyboards before a slamming relentless beat crashes along while booming synthetic bass drops and Bollywood-esque string swells push the entire track right up to the edge of distortion, hammering beats and squealing synths approaching complete meltdown, while ‘Universal Joint’ brings this album to a laidback close, with almost blues-spiritual vocal and handclap loops circling their way around a blazing Jimi Hendrix-style pyrokinetic guitar solo, swooping dub-delayed bleeps and a distorted, almost mantra-like vocal.

‘Back To The Stoned Age’ is another excellent album from the consistently forward-thinking Audio Active, that shows the Tokyo space-dub outfit pushing back some of the overdriven rock guitar elements seen on recent albums such as ‘Spaced Dolls’ in favour of exploring deeper into electronic dubscapes and expansive rhythmic backdrops; shifting deeper into the basscones, as it were. Indeed, much of ‘Back To The Stoned Age’ consists of expansive instrumental dub voyages, with a mere four tracks out of the total twelve included here featuring vocals. For this reason, ‘Back To The Stoned Age’ contains perhaps less of the immediately catchy moments included on previous albums such as ‘Puppets Parade’ and ‘Too Much Formula’, and rather than being as immediately accessible as Audio Active’s outings, this latest effort is designed to unravel more upon repeated listening, sinking into your brain slowly. It’s definitely worth the effort, though and fans of the likes of Asian Dub Foundation, Salmonella Dub and Dry And Heavy will find this an echo-chamber laden treat, indeed. Recommended.

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