Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
In the world of the re-issue, the one that makes you yearn for another time is king. When that king is benevolent and giving it makes all the praise heaped upon its shoulders the first time round not only fitting but arguably a considered and finely tuned honour and in the electro-dub pioneers Dreadzone appropriately named Sound that honour has been restored and given new purpose.
The band’s fourth album is perhaps to be seen as the finest example of the entire discography, no mean feat when bearing in mind exactly what the group has managed to produce in that time. The sound, the expansive charm and heart pulsing drama that resides in the album is one that really gets to the point, it seems to garner a life of its own and takes the listener down an undiscovered alleyway, seemingly deserted at the far end but one full of colour and a beat that is electrifying and dynamic; it is the splendour in the rough that the end of the 20th Century produced and one in which opened up a rebirth as the new century began.
The feeling of the playground, of the lively and the spirited, the forceful inclusion available to even the most unresponsive of listeners is there for the taking and as the beat begins to grow, energised by this particular re-issue, so too does the vibrant dissection and discussion of what makes this album perhaps more important than anything that has followed by any band since.
The answer lays squarely in tracks such as Crazy Knowledge, Mean Old World, Black Rock and Roll, Dread’Pon Sounds and the fantastic The Last Dance. These are tracks that captivate and capture a certain blistering powderkeg, one that revels in its heritage but is not ashamed to say that at any point the big bang is going to take it all apart. It is an album that paved a different trail for many to succumb to and yet nobody truly has done it better or with such conviction.
In the land of the re-issue, Dreadzone’s Sound is an Emperor ready to be crowned with unblemished and untarnished creative joy.
Dreadzone’s Sound is re-issued on July 31st.
Ian D. Hall