Since 1996, the year they formed in Manchester, Nucleus Roots have managed to impose an approach that is bearing fruit today. The album "Heart Of Dub", which has just come out, gathers unreleased dubs drawn from tracks on their first three opuses: "Vol 1", "Universal Love" and above all the very effective "Heart Of The Matter". So make way for instrumentals, which take precedence over vocal lines. Make way too for the power of digital sound and the numerous effects that delight dub fans. As the famous German label Rhythm And Sound has done, Nucleus Roots find in their own way the right balance between roots and electro. Voices bathed in echoes sustain, by touches, a floating, meditative feeling, and the skank, thrown to metallic echoes, confirms the legacy of King Tubby. On the other side, the bass and drums lead a static, groovy digital dance.
Some tracks drift gently towards a techno-dub hybrid, reinforced by the use of filters and "phase" effects typical of electronic music. One thinks here of Dub Rule (taken from the excellent "Jah Rule" by Simon Dan, found on "Universal Love") and above all of the very driving One Fe De Soundman (our favourite!), a fully assumed digital programming led by a demonic and omnipresent "rimshot" (the drummer plays the snare with the edge of the stick. At the heart of reggae rhythms, this style fades when Sly Dunbar popularises the use of the struck snare in early dancehall). The excellent Dub Life and Fari Dub on Rockers rhythms (the bass drum is on every beat as in techno and house), at once round and vitaminised, also illustrate very well the right balance between tradition and modernity.
What seduces us here is the way the band asserts its sonic identity. If one compares the original tracks with their dub versions, one sees that an enormous amount of work has been done on the sound. The digital horn sections in bad taste have been removed and the skank has also evolved, forgetting the digital keyboards that age badly to refocus on the guitar. From this point of view, it is the band's most accomplished album. This is confirmed by the particular care given to the tracklisting, where the sequences are thought out and the finest gems kept for the end. The whole is consistent (perhaps a little too much so?) and devilishly effective. Nucleus Roots continue an exemplary journey with brio and "Heart Of Dub" is certainly their best opus to date. The group, which this year joins one of the most respected dub labels in France (Hammerbass), seems well launched to impose on the greatest number its vision of music of echoes.
