Album reviews: Irvine Welsh & The Sci-fi Soul Orchestra | Jah Wobble | Dennis Bovell

Jah Wobble: Dub Volume 1 (Dimple Discs) ★★★★

Dennis Bovell: Wise Men in Dub (Wise Records) ★★★

Michael Steele: Mosaic (self-released) ★★★★

At various points in his literary career, Irvine Welsh has described himself as a failed musician, claimed that he was saved by acid house and created playlists for his characters to bring them to life, so music is a key trigger for his writing. He now takes that love a step further by writing and producing an album companion to his new novel, Men In Love.

This Trainspotting sequel picks up immediately where his classic novel left off, with Renton, Spud, Sickboy and even Begbie finding salvation on the dancefloor. The setting is the Nineties but the music on Men In Love – written by the shadowy Sci-Fi Soul Orchestra with lyrics penned by Welsh – is far from the contemporary strains of Britpop and more reflective of the soulful sounds of Nineties clubland, in particular the dancefloors which reverberated to gospel house music.

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Welsh and compadres are clear on their inspirations, crate-digging to emulate the sounds of Philly soul and New York disco which were sampled by the deep house producers of the day. Unsurprisingly, Welsh has all the necessary vocabulary to evoke the era and a little bit more. Opening track A Man in Love with Love captures the mania of love with lusty soul vocals from Shaun Escoffery and a Chic-meets-Boney M disco breakdown.

Jools Holland collaborator Louise Marshall represents for the women on the disco riposte You Gotta Be Strong, cutting through the sentiment and extravagant expressions of this man in love to demand actions not words. Both she and Escoffery are Welsh’s mighty mouthpieces as they testify across the album to clubbing as religion on Saviour and the transformative powers of the dancefloor on A Whole New Side Of Me. The latter is the most explicitly house music-influenced track on the album, if still dripping in delicious disco strings. With this exultant music ringing in their ears, how could Renton and co not prevail?

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You wait ages for a decent dub album and then two come along in one week. Bass ace Jah Wobble has been a dub devotee from his early days in Public Image Ltd but is not content with mere righteous vibrations on Dub Volume 1. Titles such as Old Jewish East End of London Dub suggest that this is not traditional dub territory.

This geezer philosopher infuses Existential Dub with a hint of slinky Sixties exotica and uses distorted and pitchshifted vocals to unsettling effect on Lovers Rock Dub. Tragic Slavic Dub is embellished with keening klezmer violin, Dub in the East is built around an eminently melodic bassline while Tyson Dub Remix is a true dub odyssey with its wiggy analogue synths, melancholic ska brass arrangement and the sheer elasticity of Wobble’s playing.

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On Wise Men in Dub, reggae veteran Dennis Bovell offers a more traditional adventure in sound though his curveball choice of dub-infused covers ranges from Musical Youth’s Pass the Dutchie and Pete Seeger’s Black and White, originally reggaefied by Greyhound but rendered here by Aswad’s Brinsley Forde, to more transformative takes on The Zombies’ Time of the Season, Minnie Riperton’s Les Fleurs, Argent’s Hold Your Head Up and The Stylistics’ You’re A Big Girl Now, dreamily rendered by Imagination frontman Leee John.

Edinburgh-based singer/songwriter Michael Steele describes himself as “genre-diverse” - and how on his Mosaic EP which embraces French chanson, pastoral folk, low-slung punk funk, mellow country and angular guitar picking across its ten tracks with equal credibility. There may be no stylistic consistency to speak of but you have to admire Steele’s laidback audacity in offering such a dizzying pick-and-mix of styles to choose from, each as well-executed as the next.

CLASSICAL

Visiting Rachmaninoff: Chopin Variations | Romances (Harmonia mundi) ★★★★

One of the true delights of the “variations" genre is to witness the assimilation of two divergent independent minds. Here we have Chopin (the simple sequential theme and solid chordal identity of his Prelude in C minor) reconsidered via the virtuosic expansionism of Rachmaninov. Moreover, Russian pianist Alexander Melnikov presents the latter’s 22 Variations on a Theme by Chopin Op 22 on Rachmaninov’s own piano, an instrument presented to him as a 60th birthday present and housed in the Bauhaus-style Villa Senar by Lake Lucerne commissioned by the composer in the 1930s. This well-maintained piano exhibits the same formidably brooding persona as its original owner, Melnikov mindful of such in a performance that captures both the intellectual and expressive fluidity of a constantly fascinating piece. He’s joined later by soprano Julia Lezhneva, who imbues extracts from the Op 21, Op 26 and Op 34 Romances with a typically glowing, soulful Russian-ness. Ken Walton

FOLK

Grace Stewart-Skinner: Auchies Spikkin’ Auchie (Independent Release) ★★★★

Not so much a music album as a unique social document, this debut by harpist Grace Stewart-Skinner is an “ethnomusicological postcard” from her home village of Avoch, a Black Isle fishing community with a distinctive dialect of Scots. Inspired by unearthing a video of her late grandfather reciting poems in the dialect, Stewart-Skinner blends field recordings, including a poem by her father, fisherman Ross Skinner, her clarsach accompanied by fiddler Rose Logan, bassist Rhona MacDonald and percussionist Ewa Adamiec. There is, inevitably, an elegiac quality to these fond settings. Her grandfather’s recitation, Boba’s, is framed by gently echoing harp and fiddle, while Boats, a litany of fishing vessel names, is recited over a shimmer of harp and synthesiser. With the advent of VHF radio on fishing boats, “it was always said that no-one could understand the Auchies”. Happily, extensive sleeve notes make all clear. Jim Gilchrist

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