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Y2K saw the likes of Oasis, Smashing Pumpkins, Sting and ...er... Aha, grace the stages of Hiroshima, but the best has been saved for last. The Happers Allstars night at Chinatown on December 16th is without a doubt the gig of the year (and around half the price of the aforementioned monsters - monoliths? - of rock too).
Audio Active, led by shinehead Masa, got together through a mutal appreciation of reggae. These guys, however, got further than playing covers off the Legend album. That they were drawn towards dub and roots reggae, and later sometimes fusing it with hard techno beats and screaming guitars is something for which we should be truly grateful. Audio active are quite simply the highest quality dance band to have come out of Japan.
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They were quickly noticed and adopted by their
dub guru, and master of rib shaking beats that
turns your guts inside out, Adrian Sherwood and
his On U Sound System in the early '90s.
Sherwood produced their first album in '93 and
with Bim Sherman guesting on the subsequent
single "Free The Marijuana" - they were already
in heady company indeed.
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Their love of the 'erb is impossible to ignore.
Titles such as "Weed Specialist", "Kick the Bong
Around", "Psycho Buds", and the "Hempire Strikes
Back" are just some of the many tributes to their
favorite medicine contained in their back
catalogue. Indeed, in their South Park-esque
video for their single "Screwdriver", from their
recently released album "Space Dolls", Masa
dreams of Audio Active as superheros bringing
about world peace through bombarding the world
with spliffs (joints).
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Audio Active are fantastic live. Masa is aloof,
but the crowd loves it. You are taken on a sonic
roller-coaster ride, slow head bobbing tracks
with cascading bass crashing all around on the
one hand, and mad thrashing tracks like "Robot
War" on the other. When they hit
Hiroshima, they're playing in a tiny little venue...how can you miss it?
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Dry and Heavy are like Audio
Active's alter ego. While Audio Active are hard
and are pushing dub into the next century, Dry
and Heavy are soft and celebrate the Lovers Rock
that got them into it in the first place.
They might seem to be incompatible but they
compliment each other perfectly. In fact the core
of Dry and Heavy is Audio Active's percussion
and bass unit Shigemoto Nanao (Dry) and Takeshi
Akimoto (Heavy). Taking the
name "Dry and Heavy" from a Burning
Spear track,
these two worked
simultaneously with both bands for 7 years before
releasing Dry and Heavy's eponymous first album.
This summer they released their third album
"Full Contact" - which quickly became
GetHiroshima's summer 2000 soundtrack - which
includes the vocal talents of Likkle Mai and Ao
Inoue who help make their sound altogether more
rounded.
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They topped off a summer, which included a
successful European tour- plus the beautiful
single Dawn Is Breaking being named
record of the week (by the UK's NME magazine)-
with a great performance at the
Fuji Rock Festival.
So click here, get yourself down to Lawson and buy your ticket. You know it makes sense.
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