Dance music journalism sometimes consists of attempting to elicit a response from people whose music you admire, but who are so stoned they would hardly recognise their mother if she came into the room. Then the writer goes home and strings together the gathered grunts and monosyllables into a coherent indicator of the artists talent.
Such is not the case with Asian Dub Foundation. On stage and on record they are a fearsome brew of hard stepping junglist rhythms, classical Indian influences and speeding socially conscious lyrics. When I saw them supporting Dreadzone recently I was stunned by the way they had absorbed drum & bass so completely and were able to work it into a pounding sweaty live set that would have moved a rocking festival crowd as easily as disciples of Kenny Ken and Marvellous Cain.

I met the core of ADF on the day before they set off on a month long gruelling European tour. Chandra Savale (Chandrasonic), Aniruddha Das (Dr Das) and Deeder Zaman (Master D) sit around their studio base in the Community Music Centre, London, where the group came into being. As Das explains it: “The organisation itself had been going for just over 10 years and Chandra and I run quite a few music courses. Some are one year courses like the Music and Technology Training (which D is doing) and then there’s MTTC for musicians wishing to become teachers, which Chandra and I did a few years ago”.
They ran into drum & bass nut Deeder, ADF’s 17 year old rapper and MC, through a documentary about young Asian musicians. Where he was embroiled in breakbeat rave culture, they had at least 10 years more experience in ‘the biz’ and the technical skills to go with them. It just needed the deck wizardry of Pandit G and Sun-J’s live sequencing to create ADF as the effective unit it has become today.
Das once performed with acts like Orbital and Pentatonic during his days with Headspace Sound System, and Chandra co-founded Birmingham’s Higher Intelligence Agency and was involved in setting up the city’s famous Oscillate club night. Both however, became bored with the blinkered attitude they found in much of the dance community where caning it was the be-all-and-end-all of existence.
“We’ve got to the point where everyone’s chilling out but no-one’s chilling out from anything,” says Chandra, “the whole idea of chilling out was to get away from something. Now people have forgotten about the real thing they were escaping from. One of our terms is ‘conscious party’ – we’re into partying and having a laugh but there’s no reason why you should be banned for talking about something a little less hedonistic in a club. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.” Warming to his theme he continues, observing his band’s place in the scheme of things: “The time has come really – we’ve got to change the way things are perceived, even to a tiny degree. We go out and do workshops in housing estates and youth clubs where we do actually encourage people to take control and become producers rather than just consumers.”

Chandra and Das want to demystify DAT players, sequencers, effects units and technology in general so that anyone can have a bash at cutting a tune and in doing so they have opened up the floodgates for influences on their own music. Jungle, through Deeder, has had the most notable impact. They once regarded the breakbeat sound as ‘Mickey Mouse music’ but Das and Chandra are now as likely to be found at ‘Speed’ or ‘Metalheadz Presents’ as anywhere. Being older, they draw from a wider range of music: “Motown, P-funk, hip hop, acid house,” says Chandra, “I like a lot of left-field rock too. There are people with the right vibe in all kinds of music.” I wondered why the term ‘dub’ was in the group’s name as, of all musical forms, it is commonly perceived to be the most chilled out of all: “Cos we smoke lots of ganja and listen to Bob Marley!” says Deeder to much laughter. When it subsides, Dr Das points out that, “in its original sense ‘dub’ was about experimentation, taking material that was already recorded and reworking it. We regard it as a framework for experimentation. We’ve been put on many dub nights and they expect us to be skinning up and whatever but then we hit them all with this distortion and noise.” Just when I think he has finished, he remembers the bass, his instrument: “George Oban, the first Aswad bassist, and Robbie Shakespeare (as in Sly & Robbie) – the way they use bassline melodies – sometimes that’s the only tune in the song apart from the voice.” He suggests ADF’s ‘Tu Meri’ as a personal example.

These diverse sounds reached a handy culmination last Autumn with the release of the debut album ‘Facts and Fictions’, almost over-jammed with ideas and often anger. “We had 30 years of stuff to get out of our heads and basically we got a lot of it out,” says Das now, “That’s why it was so intense because you never know when you’re going to get another opportunity to do that.” The album encompasses so many different styles that there is probably something on board for most listeners, though my personal favourite is ‘TH9’, a livid white-hot junglist/funk/metallic number about modern fascism that advises ‘kick the fuckers in the head’. Chandra soon proves to be as direct as the song about his feelings.
“It was inspired by Britain at the time of the election of British National Party councillor Derek Beackon, about 3 years ago. You had increased fascists attacks round here,” he says, “Also, the line ‘Too many people still waiting for release’ refers to Satpal Ram. Him and some of his friends were attacked in a Birmingham restaurant by people giving verbal and physical abuse, but he protected himself. He’s the one who gets put away and the geezer who died refused hospital help that might have saved his life. So how can they put this guy away for murder? I just don’t know.”

For the immediate future the band have a new single out in April, ‘Change A Gonna Come’: “It’s uplifting, positive, but also questioning,” says Chandra. “Something is gonna change. Things cannot go on the way they are. Too many people are getting fucked up.” And for those who couldn’t give a hoot about all the chatter, there is a wicked hard-edged jungle mix of the title track and an awesome spliffed-out dub of ‘Jericho’, a song from the album.
Talking with ADF is such a tonic that I wondered if they had an opinion about Eternity’s recent public flogging in certain newspapers for testing Ecstasy and trying to give its readers a pace of the pros and cons of drug taking. Chandra doesn’t need asking twice: “Drugs are just a part of being human, being animals,” he says, well in his flow by now, “Basically you’ve just got to be honest about drugs – the problem is the way people are pushed into becoming outlaws. They get into a lifestyle associated with it. A lifestyle based on a drug is a bit limiting and can be quite dangerous, but you can’t go around banning it or saying ‘YOU ARE MAD’ – it should be up for discussion. The fact is that the state has such an interest in making people who are involved in it outlaws. It’s all image to them – all sound bite. When they started doing stuff about drugs screw you up, ‘Heroin – just say NO’, they spent all the money on adverts while they cut money for rehabilitation centres. I’m sure that a lot of police and government know that really E is far less harmful than alcohol, but they’re in the pay of the beer barons.” Well, that’s said it.
But just to finish off, I play devil’s advocate and suggest that when people are out of their box dancing, maybe they don’t want to hear ADF’s social comment. “All we’re saying really is there’s things out there you ought to think about.” replies Chandra. “You don’t have to think about them all the time, but don’t NOT think about them”. Dr Das continues: “They don’t necessarily want to hear it… but part of what we’re doing is interesting people gradually.” Deeder is of the opinion that “the majority of people out there think they have to listen to our tunes at least a couple of times, and the first time they don’t even hear it.” Finally, the last word comes from Chandra Savale: “If people get off on the music, subconsciously they’re already listening to us. Even if they can’t hear a word that Deeder’s saying, the vibe is getting to them. That’s a start.”


THE JUNGLE MISSIVE
Feature taken from NME, 29 April 1995 - Words: Stephen Dalton

AS FAR as militant Nation Records stars-in-waiting ASIAN DUB FOUNDATION see it, the super-liberal wet dream of that classless multi-racial 1990s Britain we keep hearing about is a steaming great turd of a lie. Their aim, in the nicest possible way, is to rub our faces in that turd.

ADF use every weapon in their musical arsenal to demolish bullshit stereotypes. In the process, they make powerful records like their current ‘Strong Culture’ EP, a kneecap-crunching collision of rock, reggae, bhangra, jungle and the machine-gun poetry of 16-year-old rapper Master D. This isn’t some polite laboratory hybrid, more like 1,000 street-music soundbites crammed into a high-speed blender.
“It’s not designed to sound Asian, but it’s a reflection of what it means to be Asian in this country, which is basically diverse,” argues Steve ‘Chandrasonic’ Savale. “It’s a reflection of all the things we were brought up on: classical sitar music, punk, hip-hop, fuck, acid house…”
Steve was a founding member of ambient wibblers Higher Intelligence Agency, but quit after discovering most of the blinkered groovers he was mixing with believed the BNP was an ace new techno outfit. Even now, there are no lower terms of abuse in the ADF ranks than ‘New Ager’. Except maybe ‘liberal’. They are not here to chill-out. They aim to agitate, educate, organise…
“Our interpretation of politics isn’t just left or right, Labour Party or whatever,” explains Ani ‘Doctor’ Das, who built ADF out of the music workshops he runs for Asian youngsters in East London. “The type of politics we propose is locally based. It relates to the teaching we do here, helping people to take part and get autonomous. We want to present something practical.”
Examples? How about the two Asian kids who dropped out of Ani’s workshop? He was livid until he discovered his classes had inspired them to get jobs for the first time in their lives. “OK, it’s not like throwing some government out,” he laughs, “but it’s something practical.”
More ambitiously, ADF members were out in force when the BNP’s Derek Beackon lost his seat in Tower Hamlets last year. Just before the election they played a show in the racism-stricken heartland: not the sort of easy-option armchair liberalism most bands favour.
“We target people,” nods John Pandit, ADF’s political strategist. “Last year we played Tower Hamlets College just before the May elections. We were involved in a strategy of defeating the fascists. We told people to get off their arses and vote and those few votes might have made the difference. Then we spent election day organising the youth there…”
“It’s small scale,” concludes Steve, “but if you’re talking about politicisation, just doing this music challenges a lot of nonsense that’s still perceived about Asian people, like the George Harrison hippy notions of Indian people somehow being more spiritual. All that is just shit.”


IF MUSIC BE THE FOOD OF LOVE, LET IT ALSO NOURISH THE BRAIN
Feature taken from Asian Times, 10 December 1994 - Words: Alex Manda

Aniruddha Das is irritated with his DJ. “You are not just a DJ,” he shouts. “You are a DJ, you play an instrument like we all do.” False modesty is not something which interests Asian Dub Foundation. Did Coxone Dodd just happen to own a studio? Was Afrika Bambaata just a DJ? Did Gandhi just make a few speeches? If John Pandit (Pandit G) wants to be “just a DJ” it will have to be in another band. In Asian Dub Foundation he is THE DJ.
Either you do your work or you don’t. When they are interested in something they are genuine. Das teaches skills to his community, at the Musicworks studio in East London. Pandit is active in anti-racist groups in Islington and Tower Hamlets. Deeder Zaman took up rapping at age nine and was active member of east London’ influential dub-trance sound system Joi.
This dedication could make them sound fierce and serious. But, in their studio a relaxed atmosphere reigns. Das plays with samples and basslines as we talk and calmly relates stories of his former bands. Pandit talks calmly and directly about the push to the right in politics or street level movements. They are conscious, but not furious. Once you know how the world is run you do not have to lose control, but you do have to make a stand.
That stand is Asian Dub Foundation’s ‘Conscious EP’. The bass has more rumbles than a Saturday night in Glasgow and the sweet, piercing Bollywood vocals suffuse the mix with a blissful resonance. The samples are designed to feel eerie and familiar. Das says: “I could not name the films but I recognise the songs. We also recognise the massive variation in Hindi film song. People talk about eclecticism in Asian music but this is not a new thing. Old Hindi films take from all genres from rock and roll to jazz. For instance, Transglobal Underground once asked us where we got our double bass samples. They were from Hindi films. The musicians were really having a laugh.”
The group try to look beyond the clichés around Asian-influenced dub and trance music. They are happy for people to make use of Indian imagery but they are not interested in their culture being used as ‘exotica’. Das says: “Our Asian-ness is not necessarily expressed with table playing, for instance. It’s much more to do with underlying principles. The idea of cycles influences how we play the bass. The same patterns appear in dub bass and table. We get so many horrible demo tapes of cliché sitar that just get recorded over.”
The group started out as a workshop taught by Das at the Community Music studio in Farringdon, London. Five members felt that they had ideas to contribute and a band, based around the studio, was formed. Their music still has an experimental feel and their organisation is an open collective. Members have brought in experience from the sound system scene, where improvisation with effects and reproduction is a vital part of the performance. Das says: “We are trying to get as much improvisation as possible. We do not want to reproduce the CD. You get bored if you get two gigs the same.”
Variety has been a vital part of their gigs too. They began with a series of benefits for the Anti Nazi League, where they played to a largely white ‘alternative’ crowd. But they have progressed to a variety of venues. They enjoyed a residency at the Ministry Of Sound, a trendy South London club known for garage music, courtesy of the Arts Council. Other work includes Conscious Response, a night of poetry and music at the Battersea Arts Centre introducing new Asian artists. Pundit says: “Our best gigs are where people relate to the words, i.e. they are not too out-of-their-heads. The only problem is many of the youth are not used to seeing bands. When you have heard all your music on the radio and at raves, you find it strange to see four people jumping around on stage. At one of our gigs at a college, the whole crowd just stayed very still. They must have been enjoying themselves though because at the end people came over and told us they liked it.”
Enjoyment and intelligent comment are important to them. The debates in music and the media leave them worried. The group has not had to look far to find samples of racism to use in their music. Following the style of Public Enemy, tracks use samples of those they are trying to defeat to define the problem more clearly. The phone-in debate on Pete Murray’s Asylum Bill radio discussion provided them with enough material as a source. They feel it is time for music to confront issues. Pandit says: “A lot of rap we hear is just scat. It’s people showing off their lyrical skills without a message. And the media are just allowing fascism to swing everything to the right. Look at the amount of publicity for the debate over intelligence tests. In the sixties people rallied against it. Now no-one is resisting.”