Traams In Dub Vol 2 - The Elijah Minnelli Dubs

FatCat trio, Traams, have invited two modern day dub explorers, Elijah Minnelli and Jay Glass Dubs, to tackle a selection of tracks from their stellar 2022 long-player, Personal Best.

Elijah Minnelli is perhaps the more elusive / mysterious of the pair. His press one- sheets basing him in the fictional town of Breadminster, and branding his imprint the County Council's Music Initiative. Since 2019, with a handful of self-released 7s, Elijah has slowly built a complete mythology around this made up locale, which spills out into his monthly Soho Radio show, The Mustard Hour. Minnelli’s own music is a unique, distinct, fusion of reggae, Eastern European, and Latin American influences. The latest example can be found on fantastic 45 produced for Portland institution, ZamZam Sounds.

Elijah’s reworks of Traams are an “organic” affair, incorporating international folk elements, and throughout have a strong, traditional, skanking, roots feel. Low-end is always his lead instrument. Sirens, formerly a soothing synthscape of gentle bleeps and serene Morse Code signals - similar to Cluster / Harmonia’s classic pastoral kosmische - becomes a broken, beat-juggled bogle, bullied by seismic subs. Dry’s wall of raucous riffing, and searing stratospheric feedback gets heavily sedated. Stripped to a mournful melodica-led samba. The Light At Night, which began life as a bruised and wasted sermon, delivered by Protomartyr’s Joe Casey, riding another frantic, Velvet Underground-esque raga, also pays haunting, hypnotic homage to Augustus Pablo’s famous Far East Sound. Its winds, however, blow in from The Balkans, like a squeezebox shanty from the Turkish Straits or Black Sea, rather than Mother Africa.