Craig Bratley’s sophomore album, Return To Bass, has been a long-time gestating, with a whisky-like distill time in the musical barrels from whence this came. His debut was in 2014 and 12 years later here he is again, in the blink of a, er, Jurassic age. In that time, he’s gathered a good deal of experience, released several musically varied 12-inches, as well as having Andrew Weatherall remix a few of his efforts (not completely surprising, since The Guv’nor also played Craig’s music).
Bratley has spent the last few years honing his musical and technical skills which are evident on this album, as are his influences, which can be heard on his impressively consistent back catalogue, include Italo-disco, British electropop, acid house and a slowed down version of Chicago house that lends it a heroin crawl. Added to that, though, is the dub reggae sound championed by King Tubby, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and our own Dennis Bovell, which is much in evidence on this set.
It seems apposite, in the wake of the death of Sly Dunbar (and, less recently, his partner, Robbie Shakespeare) that Craig’s album is now appearing, since Bratley’s sound is imbued with a dub sensibility and the engine of the whole set is built around the thud that Sly & Robbie brought to their greatest productions; the song titles are clues: ‘Plasticine Dub’, ‘Return To Bass’ and ‘No In Between Dub’.
The LP Features standout vocals from Amy Douglas, Thomas Gandey, and Ola, plus funeral-march trumpet work by Tim Hutton.
