Review: Love of Dub, Black Swan

At midnight a healthy queue of youngsters had formed outside the Black Swan, patiently feeding the tight security, before dispersing with excitement into three rooms and a giant garden.

The organisers had obviously taken pride in the decor; red and gold fabric covered the walls and ceilings, the lights kept everything moving, shining in deep dark shades of red.
I think that was the first time I’ve entered a sound system dance to find a drum squad. The Batala Samba Collective had the main room entranced, a close crowd swayed to the raw percussive energy these oh-so-happy synchronised drummers! I’m not sure where I put Samba in my expectations of a dub night, but in short bursts, the tribal nature of it fed the room with vibration, jungle-like drum patterns and fixated togetherness, all of which are welcome concepts in a dub dance.

The Hempolics’ music was mellow, their stage presence was hats and hair cuts, reserved attitude, and slightly forced skanking. The self-produced rhythms were tasty, as were the vocalists’ abilities to grace them, but didn’t seem to hit through the Soundsystem or dominate the room. The atmosphere was of a bubbling house-party, with the Hempolics playing a laid-background, their songs “Love to sing” and “Serious” stood out amongst other textbook dub culture lyrics and moreish slow jams.

We headed outside as the Samba drums were being loaded back into the front of the dance floor, out through the corridor where sing-along-and-rewind reggae anthem business was in full effect, sounding sweet too.
We observed the legendary garden chaos of a busy Black Swan, I had the usual concerns for a few of the young lost faces, like a class trip that slipped the teachers and ate too many sweets, but such is some raving. The almost surreal amount of lighting made you feel as if in a secret bar at Glastonbury though, complete with bonfire.

Jamaican flavoured Jump up D ’n’ B floated down from upstairs, as Soom T stepped up and didn’t disappoint the main room. Her signature sing-jay style, and chirpy Glaswegian hosting was a worthy headline appearance in Bristol once more, with Dub Smugglers selecting the finest weighty party tracks for her to animate. Typically mesmerising and stompingly on point as usual, the most enthusiastic dancers only found limb space in the back corners.

Soon (unsurprisingly) the corridor room descended into Grime, and Fleck expertly chopped half-time jungle breaks upstairs, it was time for the local veterans to shake the Earth.
RSD B2B Pinch with Joe Peng on host duties, always going to be a sure fire display of rig testing dubs.
RSD hit your intestines with bass heavy skanking-gold at 140bpm, Pinch answered with various styles, switching up the speed and direction, but in my opinion not quite hitting the sweet spot that Rob Smith had in his cross-hairs.
All in all the Love of Dub was strong, varied, and well thought out. less about heritage and foundation sounds, more of a colourful roots party with your class-mates.