This London show is part of Asian Dub Foundations 30th Anniversary tour celebrating the bands long life as radical musicians and campaigners for human rights. The band are releasing a compilation of 30 years of Collaborations in the near future to follow on from the recent The Signal And The Noise remix single. They are also the 47th band I’ve seen this month so hope I don’t sound too jaded.
By the time Asian Dub Foundation came on the Hootananny was packed all the way back to the pool table of this old school South London Boozer turned music venue.
Asian Dub Foundation @ The Hootananny
They opened the show with a flute dub version of current single The Signal & The Noise the four piece with Nathan Flutebox Lee giving it a Shaft like feel before Ghetto Priest and Aktar Ahmed came onstage as The Signal & The Noise really opened out.
After Aktar had welcomed us all, he told us he couldn’t believe it was 30 years they had been going, Steve Chandra Savale introduced Can’t Pay Won’t Pay from recent album Access Denied that had some deep Junglist riddims married to blistering guitar with a crucial message.
In a week of typical August riots Broken Britain seemed more on point than it should have done, full-on bassline ripping through everything, the crowd starting to bounce. Access Denied hammered home the ridiculous situation many people find themselves in, while trying to cross man made borders, it was a shame that Ghetto Priests vocals weren’t loud enough to be clearly heard above Chandra’s sizzling guitar attack.
We were a few hundred yards from the old Frontline of the 1980’s Brixton riots, but this song seemed pertinent strangely timely, it married a dubby edge to drum & bass, with in your face dancefloor dynamics. La Haine flashed back to different riots that only hardcore flute action could make sense of.
Aktar introduced Flyover by telling us they were about to go Chandrasonic a signal for some guitar overload wizardry, drums nailed the rhythm that everything else flew off of.
The long Philly soul flute solo Nathan unleashed allowed the rest of the band to slowly join him, in a show of strength for Stand Up from The Signal And The Noise.
They stripped back to a four piece for the Drum and bass intensity of Jah that was a killer dancefloor tune. Naxalite from Rafi’s Revenge was full of bile for the state of the world, but played like the hit it really is, the joy coming from the audience was immense. They closed the set with a look at how much Oil has caused war and destruction on our planet and how they want things to change for the better.
They got an encore that opened with another great slab of Flutebox magic as he was joined by Chandra, Aktar and the gang they really let rip. Aktar succeeded in making me feel a tad uncomfortable, in ways I need to me made to feel, with chants of Free Palestine the current catastrophe must be solved peacefully, no matter what my close Zionist friends may feel. This was part of the intro to Fortress Europe about the insanity of immigration policies in Europe, this was a great sing and dance along version with loads of keyboards.
They closed the show with a deeply dubby version of Rebel Warrior that left us in no doubt that after 30 years Asian Dub Foundation are still making crucial heavy thought-provoking music while never forgetting to have a good time along the way.
Live review of Asian Dub Foundation @ The Hootanany, London on 8th August 2024 by Simon Phillips. Photography by FBJ Photography.
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