I don't consider myself a musician, but I like to make little home recordings-- largely improvised, often cheesy keyboard/guitar ejaculations-- for fun and relaxation. My recording techniques leave a lot to be desired: Only two channels on my battered old Tascam four-track are still functioning, and you can often find me propping up a microphone right in front of a guitar amp or tiny, built-in keyboard speaker. I mention this because Dutch Dub (a solo project from Pretty Girls Make Graves' Nick deWitt) sounds a lot like one of the tapes piled in my closet.
So how can I take Dutch Dub to task if I'm guilty of the same thing? Simple: I'm not trying to sell you mine. Indie dudes doing side projects in genres other than their own is nothing new, but deWitt definitely made a poor choice for his "dabbling genre." This take on dub sounds like deWitt basically stripmined a cheapie Casio's tone bank, directly miking the speakers. If you know anything about dub, you know it goes as well with tinny recording as bubblegum does with popcorn.
Most modern listeners at least recognize dub in a "know-it-when-we-hear-it" sort of way, if only because of the genre's appropriation by Massive Attack, PiL, Pere Ubu; hell, even Sublime. A history of dub is uncalled for here, but it should be noted that production-- deep, echoing, cavernous, stark, drenched in reverb and delay-- is fundamental. Without it, you wind up with this: Monochromatic tones and repetitive rhythms running straight down the center of the mix, flat and affectless.
There are no highs and lows here-- although perhaps the songs with gruffly emotive, muffled vocals are slightly more interesting-- just an ongoing low-grade annoyance, as the album runs through seventeen tracks that manhandle dub with a caricaturist's eye. "Heat Up" is all canned drums and what sounds like a Fisher Price electric piano. Bursts of static stand in for echoing space on "Dare to Dream"; "Dutch Waltz" and many of its brethren could be mistaken for Nokia ringtones; "Peanut Butter and Jelly Heart" bleats and plinks into oblivion. Maybe deWitt's not "serious" about this record; maybe it's a tribute to kitsch or something. It's hard to tell, and even harder to care.
