This first Dope Smugglaz album begins with Instructions for Use. If you take the precautions of relaxing, paying attention and using high-quality headphones, this becomes private dance music.
Extremely well engineered and produced, and replete with stereo panning effects it may be, but who wants to dance by themselves? Dope Radio has traces of pretty much everything considered to be mainstream dance music in the last two decades – with late ’80s rave being the main focal point. British DJs Tim Sheridan and Keith Binner may be eclectic in their sources of samples; but their method of mixture only works to a limited extent. Despite being based around the concept of a radio broadcast – ‘static’ punctuates the album – the tracks hold no real unity; and it would work better as the odd sample-laden gem in a student-night set.
Extremely well engineered and produced, and replete with stereo panning effects it may be, but who wants to dance by themselves?
But, Dope Radio still offers some standout tracks and commendably quirky moments. The Smugglaz wooed iconic collaborators like Howard Marks and Shaun Ryder, and the title to Barabajagal trips off Mr Ryder’s tongue like he’s back in the Happy Mondays again._ Mi Glad You Like It….Now Step_ – inspired by a Barbadan hairdresser – features compelling analogue keyboards and an ’80s beat that is quintessentially tacky at times. The nostalgia for the 1988 rave scene evident on I Remember When It Was All Fields is a compelling indication of where the Smugglaz are coming from; but its Apple-Mac computer-voiced reverie goes on too long by far.
More dud are the Malcom Maclaren-sampling Double Double Dutch – too poppy and annoying unless you’re on something stronger than coffee – and the two-dimensional sampling of The Bass That Started It All. Dope Radio achieves much, but falters at the end. There is an instinctive attraction lacking on the final two tracks: Overdosed on Everything – a satisfying drugs polemic pitting hip-hop against big-beat electronica – and Married to Music.
Imagine Vogue-era Madonna marrying the spirit of UK garage vocals, and coming over all Donna Summer by the time of the divorce. This is not by any means straightforward dance music. D.Rose
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