Currently enjoying “Dub Side of the Moon” by Easy Star All-Stars

You guessed it: Dub Side of the Moon is a dub reggae tribute to the Pink Floyd album of the nearly same name. It was released by Easy Star All-Stars in 2003, and it’s surprisingly not bad.

I mean, to be fair, it’s not great. You wouldn’t be right to call it a tacky cash-in, but you wouldn’t necessarily be wrong, either. Especially since we’re talking about the same group of performers that apparently brought us Radiodread and Easy Star’s Lonely Hearts Dub Band.

Much of the success of the project is due to the source material. Once you’ve heard a record like this, you realize how easily tracks like “Us and Them” and “Any Colour You Like” lend themselves to dub interpretations. And the drum and bass reconstruction of “On the Run,” while totally unexpected, comes away feeling like a natural progression.

Then again, an MC bellowing “Time is the master, time can be a disaster!” over and over again on “Time” is just one of the many “creative” changes that weren’t exactly missing from the original album. The instrumental bonus version of this track makes up for it nicely, and it’s complemented well by the equally winning “Great Dub in the Sky.” But those are followed by two meandering, superfluous tracks that bear little to no relation to the original record.

I mean, I guess you’ve got to give them credit for shying away from changing the final line of “Brain Damage” to “I’ll see you on the dub side of the moon.” But only because you’re eight tracks into the record at that point, and by then it seems like exactly the sort of cheesy thing they might unapologetically try and get away with.

Admittedly, I did enjoy this record, and I may not be doing a very good job of conveying that. It’s an album with a lot of great moments, but even in the depths of those, it’s tough to ignore the outwardly gimmicky nature of the whole project. Frankly, I think the only way you can truly appreciate it is if you’ve got at least a bit of a sense of humour about it.

I mean, the liner notes feature instructions on how to recreate a variation of the dark side of the rainbow effect with the disc. If that doesn’t say “We’ve got our sights firmly set on the lame white college stoner demographic,” then frankly, I don’t know what does.

But in the end, it’s not a bad record. If you’re willing to take it with a grain of salt, then I’m sure you’ll find plenty to like about it. There’s unfortunately no indication that any of the profits from the record were ever invested in a dub version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but that was probably a long shot in any event.

Posted in Currently Enjoying