Adrian Sherwood

𝘼 𝙙𝙤𝙣 𝙜𝙤𝙧𝙜𝙤𝙣 𝙤𝙛 𝙐𝙆 𝙙𝙪𝙗 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙨𝙩𝙪𝙙𝙞𝙤 𝙨𝙘𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚, Adrian Sherwood returns with his cracking 1st solo album in 13 years, leaning in on mystic roots pressure aided by Doug Wimbish, Keith LeBlanc, Brian Eno and more, feeding forward nearly half a century of mixology with and for myriad acts including Tackhead, NIN, Sinead O’Connor, Panda Bear, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Depeche Mode and African Head Charge.

One of the most important figures in British music since the early ‘80s, Sherwood has long been a vital bridge between Afro-Caribbean and diasporic musics, plus synth-pop, industrial and much more in his roles behind the studio mixing desk and A&R helm of the On-U Sound label. If you’ve followed UK music at all since then it’s impossible to have avoided his name, and if you know what’s good you probably own some of his work, perhaps without realising.

The Collapse of Everything is a rare instance of an album with Sherwood’s name at the top – as opposed to w/ or ft. others – yet typically draws strength from collaboration via his cherry-picked squad of players from the On-U Sound camp and beyond. As the title says, the 10 tracks are his response to contemporary fuckries and impending madnesses, with a particular bias to heavy spiritual gravity in its recurring licks of desert blues guitar doom and bass trample, but also necessarily leavened with more fleeting and ritualistic feels in ways that call to mind the psych-bluesy roots dub meditations of Keith Hudson and Dadawah, or even Éthiopiques spirits in his own way.

Moving dread and melancholic top to bottom, Sherwood brings a masterful discipline throughout, evoking Peace & Love in the subtly hallucinatory, flute-led and spangled title cut, lacing Eno’s noirish guitar textures on the pent-up dreadnaught The Well is Poisoned (Dub), and nodding to the doleful airs of Éthiopiques jazz on Body Roll. We feel the pull of gnarlier dubstep yoked back into acidic half-step on Battles Without Honour and Humanity, classic JA obsessions with Morricone-esque soundtracks on Spaghetti Best Western, and historical warning in the crushed slug Hiroshima Dub Match. Ultimately, the dread is balanced with psychedelic optimism – or at least escapism – in the fleet-hoofed closer The Grand Designer.