Prototype Issue
Spreading the Jamaican Love
By Nicole Powers
(page 1 of 1)Having toured the world with Jack Johnson, songwriter/drummer Adam Topol returned to LA to cook up a jazz-infused, dub-centric project in the Culver City home studio of guitarist/engineer Franchot Tone. Appropriately, their new project is called Culver City Dub Collective.
The duo’s debut album – Dos – reflects their community ideology and features more than 30 performers, including the likes of Ben Harper, Money Mark, Matt Costa and Bedouin Soundclash’s Jay Malinowski. RTLA hooked up with the two homeboys for a little chat.
Is Culver City the new Silverlake?
Franchot: Not yet. It is up and coming however.
Adam: We intend to put it on the map as the new dub capital – second only to Jamaica, of course.
Franchot: It’s funny on MySpace, we get these enthusiastic messages from people from Culver City who just love that we’re representing.
Adam: It’s a way of us being a little bit playful and honest about where we’re from.
Franchot: There’s an element of irony and humor in the reference.
How did you get into dub music?
Franchot: It started with the more mainstream stuff… Bob Marley, Toots & The Maytals.
Adam: I remember my defining dub moment; I was really drunk in high school, and someone passed me a pipe and I got really stoned. It was the first time I’d heard dub, and it just opened my mind to it. It’s this transcendental thing. It just puts me in a relaxed, happy state of mind.
Adam, for you dub music came by way of Cuba?
Adam: I was going to school in Boston studying jazz, and I was really disenchanted with music. I started going to Cuba. It was there that I got into the fact that making music was a spiritual thing and that it was a community activity. It renewed my enthusiasm for drumming.
There’s a hell of a community on this record.
Franchot: It was a gift for Adam and I to work with this diverse core of musicians. The goal for our new record was to bring in some singers. A lot of people can’t identify with instrumental music.
You talk about putting vocals into your music, when of course the roots of dub lie in taking the vocals out of reggae.
Adam: It’s a little twist on the whole thing.
Franchot: Taking that dub element that we really captured on the initial E.P. and elaborating on it.
Adam: There are elements where I really feel like it sounds like King Tubby or Lee Perry, but then a song like “Waltz for Tomahawk” is almost like dub jazz. There’s no way we’re going to recapture what those guys do, so why not tell a different story.
I remember my defining dub moment; I was really drunk in high school, and someone passed me a pipe and I got really stoned. It was the first time I’d heard dub, and it just opened my mind to it.
Culver City Dub Collective’s debut album is out on LA’s Everloving Records on July 31. They will appear at the Troubadour on Aug. 17 with ALO and at the Sunset Junction Music Festival on Aug. 18 with Ben Harper and Blonde Redhead.
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