Following recent neck surgery, British reggae veteran Dennis Bovell received strict orders to give his bass playing a rest. This could not have been an easy thing to hear seeing as how he handled the low end for Matumbi and Linton Kwesi Johnson, but Bovell came up with a solution, returning to the production side of his career with a visit to the master tape vault, where he retrieved his productions from the late ’70s and early ’80s, grabbing the ones that had never received any dub treatment. After “baking” the tapes a bit (it gets rid of oxidization and gunk) and booking a 2012 session at Ariwa (Mad Professor‘s studio), Bovell created Mek It Run, a unique slice of dub that spans decades but retains a certain spirit, one not driven by modern gimmicks but an allegiance to the groove. Here, the producer acts as a Rasta Buck Rogers awakened from cold storage, blissfully unaware of dubstep’s impact and common usage of the laptop as studio equipment. Still, Mek It Run sounds like little else simply because of its sonics, which are vintage yet oddly clean, with much more punch and presence than found during dub’s golden age. For example, check the sharp stab of bass that kicks off the title track or the beginning of “Princess Dub,” where the gap between bass and treble is wide enough to drive a truck through. “Burden” is the kind of music that must make Thievery Corporation envious, with I-Roy in young voice and the music just as crisp as 2012 allows, while “After the Storm (Tahrir Rock)” is a fine example of dub that builds something very different out of the original tune, taking the non-political track “Zombie Zones” and dubbing it into a commentary on the fall of Egypt’s Mubarak regime with the sounds of sirens and explosions. Liner notes from Steve Barker sweeten the deal, but Mek It Run is already an easy recommendation for dub fans, acting as either an oddball release to dissect and analyze, or a rich soundtrack for any day that requires those fat Bovell rhythms.
