Sandoz -- Chant To Jah -- Touch Recordings

Track Listing

1. King Dread
2. Higher Than That
3. Scientific Exploitation
4. Chant To Jah
5. Spiritual Vibe
6. Straight Forward Rasta
7. Cockpit Country
8. Unity Dub

It's hard to fully appreciate a musical style without acknowledging it's founders. In their day the pioneering members of the UK's highly innovative Cabaret Voltaire helped form a whole new way of going about creating music. Through their electronic/dub experimentation they helped influence what electronic and industrial music has become today. However, it seems they have been washed over by today's wave of musicians that they helped inspire, and unfortunately their more recent projects are often overlooked. Founding Cab member Richard H. Kirk is still dabbling in the lesser known regions of music, and this latest extension of his Sandoz project is a prime example.

This disk has a strong reggae influence that is clearly audible in the music, with the recognizable sounds of traditional reggae tinged guitar and percussion blended in with electronic beats. The track listing echoes this combination with words like "dread", "high", and "rasta" all sticking out, hinting at what the sound entails while at the same time paying a sort of homage to reggae itself. It's a very interesting crossover.

This album was recorded at Western Works, the very same studio that housed the creation of every Cabaret Voltaire album I can remember. This reflects how even though the music has evolved a lot since the early Cab days, the same environment that fostered the creativity and originality of that music is still a mainstay in Kirk's current work. He has released a lot of new material as of late, and if this release is any indication this is likely to continue at a steady rate.