Brothers & Sisters, if there’s one name who’s constantly been rising on my last.fm charts for the past few months, it must be Fedayi Pacha. If you’ve been following us since 2005, you’ll remember that I loved his previous album as well, but this time it’s become a sweet addiction, even to the point of addicting other people who aren’t really into dub and oriental stuff. This secretive Franco-Armenian from Hammerbass Records (who also gave us last year’s Kanka album), who plays with his hood on all the time is extremely well-versed in fusing all kinds of Middle Eastern sounds and thus very successful in taking the Jamaican out of dub to make it just an a method of making music.

Now I truly love dub and I’ve got no probs with the Rasta movement at all, but seeing dub pigeonholed into a local Jamaican music is not something I’d prefer. Middle Eastern music is totally suitable for dub as demonstrated by the Turkish crew Baba Zula as well, (which I shamefully haven’t featured here, but fear not), even I had a few dub pieces called middle-eastern dub, but they were not up to the same notoriety as Pacha here. Listen to Yallah, Cowboy for a dancefloor destroying stepper, the last 1 minute having an amen-like break even, or the opener Apricot Wood, with an opening melody resembling the RAI pop hit Ya Rayah, but turning into something different instantly, and you’ll see what I mean. There’s 18 songs here on “The 99 Names of Dub“, (which is a play on “The 99 Names of God” in Qur’an, describing God’s attributes like The All-Aware, The Utterly Just, The Pardoner etc.) and I’ve been havin’ a hard time trying to choose what to feature, because frankly there’s so many good tracks on this one. Straight to top of 2007 list, if you’re into exotic & oriental stuff, this is essential!

bhayravi dub

Fedayi Pacha – Yallah, Cowboy