Here is one of the most surprising and inspired bands of the '90s, a decade musically not very defined in which, however, there were some good experimental projects. Dreadzone is a British band that wisely mixes styles such as electronic, reggae, trance, folk and dub, achieving with this Second Light (1995) a work worthy of being part of the "bibles of sampling" in whose altars are My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Zoolook or Who's Afraid of the Art of Noise?, the last one surely very much in the mind of the trio that occupies us: Greg Roberts, Tim Bran and Leo Williams.
Here is one of the most surprising formations and After their debut with 360潞 , Dreadzone turned to this Second Light, where they put all the meat on the grill. It is a rather ambitious work, a sort of homage to Great Britain as a micro-continent that brings together cultures from all corners of the world. Indeed, the former British Empire, slowly dismembered throughout the 20th century, has given rise to places like the city of London as the scene of a multiethnic and multicultural amalgam, where Asians, people from the Middle East, Africans, Caribbeans, Latinos, etc. coexist.
This is one of the most surprising formations and this Second Light, and all the work of Dreadzone in general, is oriented to a young audience that likes to dance and demands a minimum of musical quality. It is not strange that a band as personal and intelligent as this one delighted thousands of dancers in the macro festivals that were held at that time in England. They represent the best of what today is popularly known as "electronic music", evolution or derivation almost always inadequate -as much in execution as in spirit- of what this genre gave in previous decades, and that is mainly connected to the guild of the disc jockey and the "raves".
Some of the tracks are a bit repetitive, too much in the "trance" wave that was then in fashion, and some would even fit well in some musical of the Indian film industry, Bollywood. But the track that impressed me, which was also the first I heard from Dreadzone, was A Canterbury Tale, an exquisite electronic folk exercise, worthy of those Chaucer's tales that are not too far from the aforementioned Arthurian myth. The song Little Britain, moreover, entered the charts with force, reaching the highest position of all the singles released from the album. I happily recommend it, because I suspect that for more than one it may be a very pleasant surprise to hear this band for the first time.
