REVIEW: EARTHQUAKE - Mighty King David Sounds (Earthquake)

Earthquake has been around for quite some time now yet always kept a low profile and stayed very underground. Only known to the few who've come across them. Originally Earthquake was made out of a duo consisting of TNT Roots and Winston Dread. It was way back in the eighties that their musical journey began in Northampton where they also made the first vocal recording of a young Tena Stelin. Through the ninties they released a number of really experimental dub albums which sounded more hardcore and rather unconventional for the common dub market. Nevertheless they were exposed to the roots and dub masses by sound systems like Iration Steppaz and others. In the late ninties the duo parted but TNT Roots kept producing material under the name Earthquake. In 2004 TNT Roots and Tena Stelin released, what is to my knowledge the first vocal album featuring Earthquake rhythms, "Cosmic Intervention" which evidently reached a new crowd of people and not only the more hardcore dubheads because of Tena Stelin's contributory. Last year we also saw the release of TNT Roots in the guise of Yahweh Warriors with the album "Yahweh Warriors in Dubwise".

Soundclip - Earthquake - "Almighty Dub"

"Mighty King David Sounds" follows in the same agenda of deep and dark dub as its predecessors. The music coming out of the Earthquake Studio is either something you like or very much dislike since it's a extreme kind of music. Everything is almost too much. The basslines are crumbling and turning in the low parts of the chordscale, the skanks and melodies or distorted and ghostly. Many uses such words as brimstone, lightning and thunder when describing Earthquake's music, funnily those were the first words that came to my mind when hearing Earthquake for the first time.

Soundclip - Earthquake - "Moses"

But somewhere in all this chaos of sounds I find a meditative beat to the rhythm and sense to the out of this earth melody when giving the music attention and effort. It's not the sense of beauty in the music that captures you but the raw and intense depth within it. Highlights on the album are the more conventional songs (in Earthquake standards that is) "Almighty Dub", "Moses" and "Zion Soldiers". As you might have figured out by now this is deep deep dub music and nothing for the weak hearted dub listener.

/Jakob Levi - 30/10-06

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