Idjut Boys - Versions

Pitchfork 74

Each generation comes upon Jamaican dub and its stoned spacetime elasticity in their own way. Twenty-first century dubstep fans might have traced that wobble back to the likes of Jah Shaka’s soundsystem while alternative rock fans in the '90s learned about such music thanks to the likes of Tortoise and the Lee "Scratch" Perry cover of Grand Royal. But dance music fans were well aware of the mind-altering properties of dub since the days of disco. While hot singles were on the A-side, club DJs often spun the more adventurous and unfamiliar B-sides for their dancers, as that's where producers like François K., Jellybean Benitez, Walter Gibbons, and Tee Scott (to name just a few) went deep into dub elements on their remixes. And as the '80s emerged, such experiments got higher and wilder, the ideal soundtrack for the wee hours at the Paradise Garage.

A great many of these experimental American dubs were compiled by Dimitri from Paris on the heady Night Dubbin’ comp, which boasted an hourlong mix from London's Idjut Boys. Ever since their start in the '90s, the duo of Dan Tyler and Conrad McDonell have deployed heavy dub FX on their mischievous house sides, But when the duo finally got around to their noodly debut album, 2012's Cellar Door, that spacey, playful side of them took a backseat to placid, at times flaccid, instrumentals. Versions, presented now as a complete overhaul and re-imagining of Cellar Door, nudges their Balearic soft rock tendencies back toward their dubby fundamentals, offering drastically warped takes on that underwhelming album.

Their dub of two-minute acoustic guitar sketch "Rabass"—now as "Ambient Rab"—inverts proportions, the acoustic guitar now swinging in and out of earshot amid copious amounts of delay, with great gobs of bass pushed to the fore. But even at twice the length, it leaves me as unimpressed as the original. Things fare far better on the piano-led "Kenny Dub Headband", which isn’t so surprising in that "One for Kenny" was already the original album’s standout. The driving piano provided by Norwegian jazz musician Bugge Wesseltoft on the original (named for deceased British DJ Kenny Hawkes) now gets run through all manner of effects, making the Steinway sound monstrous as other details: scratch guitar, handclaps, electric gurgles, and snare drums lurch in and out of the mix. By dilating the track to about twice its length (nearly 10 minutes), it gives the Idjuts an ample playground in which to run wild.

The longest track on Versions is the 11-minute "Another Bird". But rather than swing wildly like "Kenny Dub Headband", this is a more gentle, blissed-out Balearic ride, reminiscent of the Idjuts’ subtle and effective remix of this slow-chugger. Full of guitars arcing towards the horizon, it’s perfect for manning a sailboat at sunset. Or as Phil Sherburne recently put it on a round-up of all things Balearic: "If you're not full-on levitating by the end, you need to check the settings on your stereo."

"Going Down"’s dub benefits from a few minutes more than the original, which got diluted by the vocals and guitar. Here the Idjuts accentuate the darker turns that got lost amid the nylon-string strums of the original, but it takes a few minutes before the druggy effects take hold. When it does, they push into a far stranger headspace, the echoed female vocal asking "Why you going down to hell for love?" particularly effective. And while the driving beat of "Love Hunter" was the previous album’s other highlight, in the dub the duo scale it back by three minutes. In narrowing the space and pushing the hand percussion and all its Echoplexed permutations up in the mix, as well as distorting the guitar into alien timbres, the track tarts to resemble the strange productions of Arthur Russell circa "Schoolbell / Treehouse", suggesting yet another world of echo still to be discovered.