Rhythm & Sound reviewed by Ian Penman (2003)

The Wire’s October 2003 edition was rather a rich one: it featured a decent (and extrememly rare) interview with Rhythm & Sound alongside a feature on Miles Davis in the 1970s. It was also the month that Rhythm & Sound released W/The Artists and The Versions, two CDs featuring vocal and instrumental versions of  eight tracks, each with a different guest vocalist. The review was written by Ian Penman and it’s a gem, though I realise that some people will detest it. Anyway, here it is for you to judge:

A side B side, voice and bass, commingled rhythm and sensurround vox; ambidextrous tagteam Rhythm & Sound – Berlin mix meisters Mark Ernestus and Moritz Von Oswald (who’re also the spectres behind Basic Channel and Main Street) have this instantly recognisabl, feature up the spine, dub whirlpool, gauzily narcotic and organically hi-tech hauntological sound.

Not that the eight different singers on the Artists compilation become mrere ghosts – grainy day singers nos 1-8 -in their own histories: levelled out so that one is all, and all sound the same: more ‘doubles’ spun from the One Sound that the R&S Two hae archly crafted and now graft onto all and undread. This is not numbers theorymasquerading as return to roots. The R&S settings are more like shafts of aetherial light. Ernestus and Von Oswald’s dubble channel operates around a central core of awe: mixing desk as reverential medium, elemental tablet, atom heart monitor, sonic crypt. The mix desk used as secret recess, allowing the singers their own discrete release of tales spun. the R&S desk is more tabernacle than tablature; these sung tablets reverberate with untimely syntax (king, queen, evil, suffering) and such chill words set a collective fire. Unlike some nu Euro dub, R&S are more candle shadow than fluorescent glare. Sung air trembles – flush of skin, flutter of pulse, knot of caressed, and enormously amplified.

Nuance is all ehre: each tone – slingshot phrases of righteous ire, biblical cadence, sufferer’s woe, lover’s shock – is attentivelywoven into the (a)morphology of the R&S mix; airy layers curl palindromically around the arc of each aching plaint, a song so drenched and sodden and honeycombed, it can sound like a single voice leading a tribe of thousands through sunparched land. No monotony, though: all due tones are represented. Cornell Campbell and Jennifer Lara duet (at a distance) as King and Queen of their own zones. Paul St Hailare, aka Tikiman, and The Chosen Brothers front the Rasta camp, while Shalom makes history on “We Been Troddin”. Lovers will be rocked by Love Joy’s “Best Friend”; and – the one I can’t get out my singsong head – Jah Batta’s “Music Hit You” is a healing plea/sure.

Encrypted but not cryptic for its own elitist s(t)ake, the tender logic of R&S’s echo-nomy means that cinders from the apocalypse of roots strife get this deeply enriched and resonant afterlife: 25-plus years on and dub/roots has this improbable afterlife, this rich new klanguage, in the Euro marketplace. Which makes Berlin something like Paris used to be for post-war US jazz musicians: interzonal redemption, devotional oddy-sigh. Literal crypts where the beat not only goes on, but the nu tech kids on today’s block have the micro means to ensure that not only does the code survive, but thrives, anew.

However, given that the whole X-static point of rhythm & Sound seems to be how dub sussuration is ingrained, commingled, gloriously, porously into songform – that is its spell, its signature, its singularity – I’m not sure that I see the wisdom of any separate  Versions set. It doesnt go off on some wild new trip – staccato knots of crazy lightning, or seriously elongated trance path – so what you’re left with sounds like not much more (or less) than the awesome Artists tracks with the artists erased. The second disc versions feel unduly dry, claustrophic, too near the pro forma of other nEuro dub for my taste.

No two ways about it, though: right now R&S’s W/The Artists is the nu roots paradigm. Amour and apocalypse. Rebirth and reverb. As one line here puts it: “You’ve got to change your programme…” I ah-ah-ah… gree.

Penman really savours his wordplay, but the number of allusions and ideas that get folded into his commentary along the way more than justifies the occasional indulgence. There’s also that reference to hauntology long before it was taken up as a theme a couple of years ago. I wonder if he ever rethought his view of the Versions disc: it’s the very, relatively unembellished, absence of the singers that makes the disc so fascinating, a statement of absence and thus hugely resonant. For me, what this review does is make vivid again music that, though loved, had verged upon becoming exhausted through over-familiarity. Thank you Mr Penman.