Mixmaster Sherwood Displays Pluck, Humor

In the early ‘80s, when British rock artists were toying with the sci-fi trippiness of Jamaican dub--a reggae genre marked by heavy reverb--Adrian Sherwood was blazing trails for everyone else to follow. A studio wizard with an uncanny feel for the elastic rhythms and spatial expansiveness of Jamaican dance music, the Englishman produced records at a superhuman clip with countless acts during the Thatcher years, before slowing his pace to a mere trot in the ‘90s.

On Wednesday, Sherwood made a rare L.A. club appearance at Spaceland, re-imagining dub grooves with plucky inventiveness and sly humor.

The producer, dressed like a surf shop proprietor, worked with a limited arsenal--just a desktop mixing console and a small stack of analog effects boxes.

From this modest set-up, Sherwood conjured an intricate sonic bricolage.

Reverb and echo darted in and out of his wide-screen dub epics like ghostly apparitions. Beats would be elongated and then subdivided, while screeching sound effects were scraped across the jagged surfaces of Sherwood’s mixes. A guest “toaster” who called himself Ghetto Priest provided clipped vocal punctuation on some jams, and sang a few conventional numbers that slowed down the momentum considerably.

Foursquare dub only hems in Sherwood.

Given a clutch of tracks and the freedom to configure whatever sounds he chooses, Sherwood proves he’s an unparalleled mixmaster.