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Publication date : Thursday, December 19th 2013 - 7 942 views
Darker Shade of Roots, Ever Rootsier
Switzerland is the land of chocolate, watches and tax evasion. For some years now it has also been the land of reggae. Of roots, of revival. While Soul of Anbessa's record is still hot off the press, the first excerpts of a new Swiss release are reaching our ears: the one from Darker Shades of Roots. Killer tune alert! (This article was published on 11 December on the blog “Killers Without Fillers”, under the title “The new series from Darker Shade of Roots”, ed.).
 Darker Shades of Roots is a crew from Geneva led by the voices of Jah Bast and his pal Ras Ico. A band of musos touched by the grace of Jamaican music who, for some years, have been working to reproduce the sound that transcends them. And the Darker come with heavy arguments in their bag: their music is 100% analogue, from recording to pressing. A funny idea, recording on a tape machine in 2013, the most naive will think: “Are you aware that mp3 has been invented since?”. If you ask Jah Bast why, he will tell you that analogue sound is “warmer, because it is magnetic and not digital”. He will surely add that this sound is in fact “more human, because imperfect”, far from the sanitised standard that lines up Music more efficiently than a North Korean general with his troops. The kind of considerations that go far, very far, over the heads anointed by the society of the spectacle; but not over the Darker's. Mind you: the choice of analogue is not dictated by some paralysed nostalgia. Nor is it out of some anti-productivist delirium that the Swiss swapped the synth for a fine Hammond organ. It is simply at this frequency that they vibrate; and all the better, because it is at this one that they make us vibrate.
The Darker had got us used, notably with their already classic Jah Irror, to slow, stripped-back riddims. With the first record of this new series, the Swiss pick up the tempo slightly. And this first track, Rivers to the sea, follows to the letter the ancestral recipe of the killer roots tune: an organ intro worthy of the most Jackie of all the Mittoos, that skank that syncopates the tune… and that first line from the singer, the one that, by its meaning and power, will launch the song, the one that, if it is good, will inevitably provoke pull-ups or other forwards on the dancefloor: “Man can feel the earth is shaking…” No doubt about it, the ground will shake if this 45 is played on a sound.
SIDE A
SIDE B
The rest of the series is cut from the same cloth. As usual, these obsessives of the right note take particular care over the lead and backing vocals. Their precision in the tuning of the harmonies is thrilling, as is the intelligence of their lyrics. Special mention for Before the Sun and its dub After the Skank. You can tell these two, Jah Bast & Ras Ico, know each other like the back of their hand: you never get such osmosis with a band thrown together in a hurry, only when the connection between artists is this strong. And then, since the reader of Killers Without Fillers is not obliged to take his favourite blog's word for it, here is the proof of what I claim above, in music. Let's take the opportunity to start a game: play these tracks to your friends and make them believe it's 70′s Jamaican. I promise, they'll fall for it. Swiss ting ah carry the swing!
The Shades – Before the sun + After the Skank
The Shades – All as one + Trodding & Learning
Report written by Jeremiah (Killers Without Fillers)
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