Written by: Dave Cantrell

It is a difficult time. Now, I’d intended to add ‘to write’ to that and was debating tacking on ‘about music’ as well but a rather stark obviousness stopped me dead still after those first five words spilled on to the page and I’m sat here in this somewhat unmoored moment a bit lost on the brink of ponder and dread while this remarkable – and fittingly-titled – new record frm the no-other-word-for-it genius Adrian Sherwood unspools with a seeming ease into the messy whorl of consciousness like a djinn made of sound. Ironies abound, of course, as they almost always do in any creative venture worth its hard-fought salt but few are as glaringly elegant as an album titled The Collapse of Everything that, despite its requisite tension, arrives in the auditory cortex this rich, this sinuous, this sonorous, this just flat-out gorgeous. To add a mention of the inherent intelligence throughout every groove would be to insult our readership, of course, seeing as pretty any- and everything to which this guy’s name is attached has exhibited that quality with – what’s that phrase? Oh yeah – a preternatural ease.

Take the opening title track, for instance, a bass-heavy dub plate wherein, among much else – velvety synth strings, quick dense flurries of guitar etc – a flute, courtesy Alex White, flits as would a quickly-glanced sprite, counterintuitively leavening the heaviosity implied by that title. It’s exactly the kind of stroke of what often seems a touch of subtle, tossed-off brilliance that, should your mind drift a bit while listening to this record – it will; such comes with the package in a way – points with some precision that you’re standing deep in the midst on an Adrian Sherwood joint, one where, amongst the many quiet(ish) wonders of its architecture, its most breathtaking attribute may well be its quietest: seamlessness.

From that first cut we pass beneath the gaze of “Dub Inspector,” who silently nods with a curiously-bent Rasta affirmation, the song a playful confirmation of the form’s forever-lasting legacy; slip into the cavernous bunker that is “The Well is Poisoned (dub)” that somehow funnels sunshine into its deepest depths; the escapist but deeply-grounded “Body Roll” that this listener’s gonna turn to whenever he needs a bit of heavy peace. Couple tracks hence we’re hanging out at the “Spaghetti Best Western” (quite possibly the best song title evah), peering through the curtain of smoke as Morricone’s host of ghosts thread in and out of a possessed choreography under a canopy of heat and haze before we fall into the slo-mo contortions offered by “The Great Re-Wilding” that may well leave us in an actively passive groovy mood that we rather hope we need never vacate except of course when we stumble into the “Hiroshima Dub Match” that swirls us up into a fog of pulsing beauty that by rights should be the soundtrack to every one of those moments wherein we find ourselves lost but found in contemplation at which point, of a sudden, we’ve arrived at the not unintriguing shadow of “The Grand Designer,” finishing up the album in a lively if lovely if lonely spellcast drift through the depths of the Sherwoodian forest where dread is joy is dread neverending.

Now, whereas it’s a fair cop for anyone reading this to consider it little more than a quilt of sometimes rambling subjective impressionism, my response can only be ‘But of course it is,’ and that’s the very beauty at the heart of this thing. It’s inventive, therefore it’s suggestive, therefore it’s a delight of near-neverending discovery that heart never hears quite the same each time it’s spun and there, my dear reader friends, we may have the core definition of genius. Get this record, get it now. [via, of course, On-U Sound] [yes, though rare, what you find directly below has become a bit of a habit, or anyway it has when, as is the case in this instance especially, there’s just too much credit due to give proper respect in our review to the cast of musicians involved in bringing Mr Sherwood’s vision to life, glorious dubbing life, so we’re listing them below since to not do so would, in our minds, amount to something close to criminal journalistic negligence (please bear in mind that the cast of characters involved in any particular track varies thoughout; a couple feature on most of this album’s ten tracks but most feature on just one or a few at most)]

Produced and mixed by: Adrian Sherwood

Doug Wimbish – bass guitars

Mark Bandola – guitar/Roland Juno 60

Alex White – saxophone/reed organ/flute

Cyrus Richard – piano & electric piano

Keith LeBlanc – drums

Chris Joyce – drums

Ivan “Celloman” Hussey – umm, cello

Jazzwad – synth

Gaudi – synths/piano

Horseman – percussion

Brian Eno – guitars/vox/effects

Dave Fulwood – trumpet and flugelhorn

Alan Glenn – Harmonica

Peter Harris – guitar and vox

Matt Smyth – drum programming