BEATUNDERCONTROL

BEATUNDERCONTROL IN DUB

  1/  Neutron Dub                                (Ivarsson)                    6.45
  2/  Electroshocker Dub                         (Ivarsson)                    6.53
  3/  Gaffaman Dub                               (Ivarsson)                    6.59
  4/  Resurrection Dub                           (Ivarsson)                    7.50
  5/  Secrets of Fascination                     (Ivarsson)                    6.32
        Bill Laswell Remix
  6/  Heavy Man                                  (Ivarsson)                    5.42
        Youth Remix
  7/  Resurrection Remix                         (Ivarsson)                    4.42
        Analogue Mindfield Remix
  8/  Bait Ban                                   (Ivarsson)                    6.46
        Scorn Remix

          Recorded at ???
          Track 5 remixed at Orange Music Sound, West Orange, New Jersey
          Track 5 additional production and mix translation by Bill Laswell
          Track 5 remix engineer: Robert Musso
          Track 5 assistant remix engineer: James Dellatacoma
          Produced by Ulf "Rockis" Ivarsson
Ulf 'Rockis' Ivarsson: bass, noises, programming, melodica, guitar; Gaffaman: synthesizers, voice, FX; Christian Gabel: additional drums.

          2010 - Malicious Damage (UK), MD 656 (CD)

REVIEWS :

Ulf Ivarsson is a rock ´n´ roll animal who picked up the bass as a mere stripling back in ´79 and grew into a mighty oak. After a long career playing among the elite of Swedish pop and rock, he spent too much time watching the reels in the recording studio go round and got hypnotized by dub, whereupon he created his own one-man hybrid and named it Beatundercontrol.

Anyone familiar with the many ambient dub excursions of Bill Laswell will be immediately captivated. Bill himself apparently is, because he joins a couple of heavyweight British soulmates, Scorn and Youth (of Killing Joke fame), for remixing duties.

Ivarsson handles the controls for the first four tracks, "Neutron", "Electroshocker", "Gaffaman" and "Resurrection" dubs, respectively, purposefully and consistently workmanlike. The fourth track with its soaring melodica is equally evocative of Laswell's own particular touch and the most original of foundation dub sides to ever come out of Kingston, and thus serves as the perfect gateway to "Secrets of Fascination", Laswell´s heady contribution, conflating vast space with urban congestion.

Youth´s "Heavy Man" opens with a sample of a policeman in distress, and drags his dub further out into the dark, rain-soaked city night. Analogue Minefield bring fat, welcoming horns into their remix of "Resurrection" before Mick Harris unleashes his Scorn by kicking over all the drum sets and glowing, oozing toxic waste all over the bass.

The only other European-based artist concocting equally single-mindedly, bin-shaking dub that I can come up with is Twilight Circus Dub Sound System.

Stephen Fruitman (courtesy of Sonomu)