If Sun Ra imagined us to leave this world and venture into space, then this album is the Dub-ship to take us there. Released in 1980 by Creation Rebel, it's one of those dub albums that feels less like a collection of tracks and more like a transmission from the musical travellers of space.
Released by 4D Rhythm and later on On U Sound, Creation Rebel was the house band on the label created by Adrian Sherwood, who was the leading creative record producer, sound engineer, and artist behind the mixer dubbing. Starship Africa became the band's fourth album, recorded from sessions at Gooseberry Studios with Charlie 'Eskimo' Fox on drums, Tony Henry on bass, Crucial Tony on guitar, and Clifton 'Bigga' Morrison on keyboards. During these sessions in 1979, Style Scott overdubbed the tracks, and by 1980, Adrian Sherwood, and 'Zen Gangster', Chris Garland had started to create the album with engineer Dave 'Nobby Turner' Hunt.
As Chris Garland recounts, the creation of this album came from tapes Adrian Sherwood had recorded 2 years earlier with the Creation Rebel band. The concept for the album came from Garland, setting the main idea of making psychedelic reggae. Knowing they could never do what was being done in Jamaica, they decided to create dub music their own way and drew inspiration from groups like Kraftwerk, Can, and Tangerine Dream, as well as from Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and Terry Riley.
Garland recalls getting to the Berry Street studio and dropping a tab of acid with Sherwood. If so, the first track on the record, 'Space Movement - Section 1', feels like the beginning of this adventure they set themselves on in that studio as the spacey tape loop echo lifts off, sending the listener into a deep panning spatial awareness, taking off to where this album has been charted to take them.
In the studio, Garland pushed Sherwood to maximize the effects and echoes, initiating this spaced-out dub record into full effect. The two started adding any percussionist or drummer who happened to be around at the time to the overdub, as Sherwood would manipulate and transform each track into something entirely new from the old tapes. Sherwood was mixing "blind": they would turn over and run the quarter-inch tape, then start adding the effects and dubbing the mix backwards. The end result is a one-off dub record from Sherwood that would influence the later sounds of albums created on On-U Sound.
The album is an experience spread across two tracks, each broken into 5 and 4 sections, respectively. On the original vinyl, the title track was listed as a "soundtrack from a forthcoming motion picture." With only heresy and theories on why that might be, one theory leads to the conclusion that Sherwood hoped this album's concept could have reached William Gibson, author of Neuromancer. ’Knowing what that book is, Or rumoured to be the planned soundtrack of a Don Letts-directed film about ‘alien dreads from beyond the stars’! Une can start to imagine hearing Starship Africa blasting out of the Afro-futuristic sound system on board the dreadloc-crewed space ship SS Black Star Line.
With all that said, each moment on this album truly does feel otherworldly as you bounce through each track, wondering how they fathomed such outta reach sounds. Stand-out tracks like Space Movement Section 2 (my personal favourite) feature a bubbly synth over the rhythm, creating a meditative rhythmic melody, lathered in tape echo.
As you traverse this album, you are visited by the many extraterritorial percussion sounds that come in only once, but add so much addictive texture to the track and have been edited to be cut off short before they even ring out fully. I can only imagine what it was like to hear this album in the 80's, as it seems like such an extreme jump from what was going on in the dub world, pushing the possibility and weirdness of dubbing to its max, and I'm so grateful they did.
Some of that backwards mixing done on the album can be heard on the last track, as it feels like the ship has finally arrived at its destination, and all engines are slowing down. The trip this album holds in store for you is worth the price of admission. Creatively speaking, the output on this record is second to none, and as I sat in front of my turntable playing it over and over, I always found a new effect or sound that scratches that part in your brain. Overall, if you're a fan of new sounds, experimental studio mixing, and electronic or dub/reggae music, this is an album that should be at the top of your list to hear.
I found out about this album after doing a more in-depth listening to Prince Far I and his many works, as he was an important person in the creation of On-U Sound. Although as much as I would have loved to hear Prince Far I on this record, there are no vocals on the original release of the album. Later, with a reissue, 4 new bonus tracks with vocals were added to the album: Creation Rock, Give Me Power, Original Power, and In I Father's House, which brings in the vocals of Ranking Superstar, Jah Woosh, and Prince Far I! These new songs are dub-plate recordings over some of the riddims on the album, and they are a nice addition to the album as a whole. (Plus I get the Prince Far I vocals like I wanted, but who didn't wanna hear that)
When someone asks me to recommend some dub music, Starship Africa is my first reply. If you're going to go to the pool, you might as well jump all the way in. So if you've never explored this genre before, take a jump into it and listen to what you might find.