She Dubs Me, She Dubs Me Not - review/feature
By Cameron Officer, NZoom.com. September 2002

Peter McLennan - under the Dub Asylum moniker - has just released his funktastic first full length album. "It's a crazy dubwise hip hop mash up," he tells Cameron Officer, and he's quite right too.

The Hallelujah Picassos were one of those 'here one day/gone the next' Kiwi institutions that may one day receive some sort of 'best of' makeover and a mention in a 'whatever happened to...' column. Described as "reggae-thrash-punk-ska mutants", the Picassos dominated student radio play lists in the mid-90s and then subsequently disappeared from sight.

One member of the Picassos machine was Peter McLennan, and under the Dub Asylum guise, he has just released his new album She Dubs Me, She Dubs Me Not.

McLennan's project has actually been in existence since 1997. So why the long wait for a Dub Asylum long player?

"Basically I'm a slack bastard!" laughs McLennan when I call him for a quick chat on a sunny midweek afternoon. "It was self funded so that's always a barrier. Also, I think for me the years following the demise of the Picassos became something of an evolution. It took awhile for me to decide what sort of music I wanted to play and then I had to get enough material together to release a full length album.

"Of course once you start getting tracks together it doesn't mean you just stick them all on the album. You might have 12 tracks, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are all going to gel perfectly."

McLennan is also a music writer, regularly contributing to Real Groove and NZ Musician. Does this mean, as a discerning critic, putting your money where your mouth is and releasing your own album is that much more daunting?

"Not really," he replies. "I was a musician before I was a writer and I was a fan before anything else. I think the writing feeds into the music and vice versa."

On She Dubs Me, She Dubs Me Not, the music writer and performer has taken the skewed noise of the Picassos on a one way electro-dub ride through locations as diverse as uptown Berlin, midtown Kingston and downtown Grey Lynn. McLennan has produced a tapestry of an album consisting of brightly hued, down-and-upbeat gems.

The imagery on the album's cover suggests one big South Pacific soul sea breeze, but the content seems more international in direction than just our own backyard.

"I always knew that I wanted to put one of my shirts on the cover, but I couldn't decide which one. I collect Hawaiian and Polynesian shirts, you see. So, I just decided to put lots of them throughout the CD booklet. After spending about a year making it, it's great to hear what other people think of the album - especially if they have a different take on it."

McLennan describes the Dub Asylum vibe as a "crazy mixed-up dubwise hip hop mash up", but professes that it's quite hard to sum up the prevalent sound on She Dubs Me, She Dubs Me Not.

"There are heaps of different sounds in there. "Scratch N' Sniff" was built up from the scratchy run out groove at the end of a record, for example. Then you have old school funk in there too. Reggae, hip hop - it's all mashed up in there."

The echo-friendly swish and bang of "Freddie Is A Bad-Ass Dub Fiend", for example, is pure sinister dub - spacious yet claustrophobic at the same time. Replete with melodica and swooping slide guitar stabs, the song sounds like the soundtrack for some cinematic spaced oddity.

"What The Funk?", with soulful vocals and treble-enhanced chicken scratch guitar work, is a similarly groovy number. Never backed by more than electro handclaps and rubbish tin-thin percussion, the song still manages to rise above the mundane and become a fresh and sexy little beast.

Following on from that is the dirty bossa nova of "Patience" - a simple little song timed out by some android bass and a loungy Bond-esque vibe. Here McLennan could be taking us anywhere on his musical trip - as long as it's a black MKII Jag we're traveling in.

She Dubs Me, She Dubs Me Not proves to be a real sound collage, and every track surprises in its diversity of sound, despite the firm electro dub framework. It has the cut-up bedroom boffin feel, but is still marvelously produced.

"Now with the advent of ProTools technology, the line between the highly crafted studio recording and the bedroom musician has blurred significantly," McLennan states. Also blurred is where the samples stop and the musicians come in.

Local luminaries that have helped out on She Dubs Me, She Dubs Me Not include ex-Supergroove man Nick Atkinson, fellow ex-Picassos Bobbylon and John Pain, Sandy Mills (SJD) and actress and sometimes singer Willa O'Neill (Scarfies).

O'Neill assists on the old school hip hop groove of "You're So Sensible", which has an infectious beat backed by the prerequisite electro curves and echo effects. This is possibly the closest any Kiwi act has come to the vintage goodness of early De La Soul or Beats International in some time.

The beautifully scratchy birds n' acoustic guitar samples that lead the listener into "Scratch N' Sniff" are totally arresting and the natural, organic mood is continued as the track progresses into a dreamy - nay, trancey - voyage. It's easy to get lost along the way though, and after awhile the song begins to meander slightly, despite the big synth overtones that enter the fray at around the two minute forty mark.

Of the album as a whole, it can be said that McLennan hits the mark with the dubby, funky numbers like the title track, the frenetic beats of "Loopy Fruits" and the brilliantly titled, classically sample heavy "Revenge Of The Rogue Field Transmitters".

On the other side of the mixing desk, first single "R U Ready", which has been around for awhile but has been reworked for the long player by Pitch Black's Paddy Free, is stylishly presented but lacks something in the production - that scratchy old school charm which is prevalent in so many of the other tracks on this album.

Strawpeople always failed to hold my attention for long - as brilliantly presented as their slices of airy, streamlined music were - and it's where Dub Asylum stray into this territory that, similarly, my finger feels inclined to edge toward the 'skip' button and my neck muscles yearn for something big and beefy to nod to. We don't need another Strawpeople - hold the tweeter-friendly blips and crystalline autobahn acoustics and bring back the squelchy bass and dusty sounding samples.

This aside, She Dubs Me, She Dubs Me Not is a great little release - for the most part full of vintage beats, echo noise, organic accompaniment and samples from all over the musical spectrum.

McLennan says he'll be out on the road this coming summer, taking that "crazy dubwise hip hop mash up" to the crowds around the country. With the demise of The Gathering in Takaka, McLennan - a regular at the New Year festival - says there are plenty of other places to play this summer.

"I'm hoping to go to the South Island and play some of the festivals there, such as Alpine Unity."

Like the Hawaiian shirts that are visible throughout the CD booklet, the Dub Asylum sound is totally colourful and primarily about enjoying your good self. And whether you listen to this in the back yard, or catch up with McLennan in a parched, tent and water bottle strewn paddock somewhere in the South Island this summer, you'll certainly find plenty of sounds here to get you smiling.