DUB TRIO – “DUB TRIO IV”:
Dub Trio is back with their fourth and most powerful studio album to date, an overwhelming blend of sounds and styles aptly titled “Dub Trio IV.” The band – drummer Joe Tomino, bassist Stu Brooks, and guitarist D.P. Holmes – co-produced the album with engineer and “honorary fourth member” Joel Hamilton, at four different studios across New York City in a period of just seven days, a fusion of environments which provided many diverse perspectives for the record. “As with all our records, we make the music we want to make. If we are all on the same page with a concept or style, we’ll incorporate it in our sound. No idea is a bad idea,” says Tomino. IV finds the members playing multiple instruments, tweaking, turning & torturing knobs, cutting and chopping the audio itself, and shaping the compositions to create their own unique interpretation of “dub” as an art form.
“If archeologists in the future excavated Brooklyn after the next ice-age recedes, and they found Dub Trio IV, I think they would have found an artifact that well represents the general state of society today. If we didn’t have this musical opportunity to vent, who knows what kind of horrible people we would be.” –Stu Brooks
In the past, Dub Trio has worked closely with Lady Gaga and Faith No More’s Mike Patton as well as 50 Cent and G-Unit, Mary J. Blige, Tupac Shakur, Yoko Ono, The Fugees, Lauryn Hill, Tom Morello (of Rage Against The Machine), Mos Def, Mobb Deep, Peeping Tom and many more. In addition, Dub Trio spent much of 2010 touring with Hasidic Reggae star Matisyahu as his backing band and sometimes opening act. This collaboration gave them the opportunity to perform at the 2010 Winter Olympics where Matisyahu’s “One Day” was chosen as the theme for the winter games. The band also made numerous public appearances with Matisyahu including television performances on The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, The Late Show with David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel Live. Between tour dates, the band was able to play on and to produce studio sessions with a variety of artists – including a single mix of “One Day” by Matisyahu, and Matisyahu’s version of Elton John’s “Circle Of Life” for the Disney record “Disney Reggae Club.”
The weight of Dub Trio’s power comes from their incredible musicianship, their versatility as performers and the intense scope of their creativity as Producers. Their own records are a mind-ripping sonic collage of impossibly different musical structures all working together to build something much more staggering than the sum of its parts. Their 2004 debut album for ROIR, Exploring the Dangers of testified to Dub Trio’s jaw-dropping live skills: the album was literally recorded as a live-dub experiment. While the band’s second album, New Heavy, made good on its title, creating a metallic K.O. grounded in serious low-end theory. A live album for ROIR, Cool Out And Coexist, kicked off 2007; and between session work for other artists, Dub Trio teamed with Ipecac to unleash their third studio release, Another Sound Is Dying which found Dub Trio melding their preferred styles into a newer, bigger and more cohesively original sound.
With IV the band succeeds dramatically at emphasizing the ideas, emotions, sounds, and concepts of their current musical exploration. “This record is a snapshot of where and who we are at this moment in time,” says Joe Tomino. “There are a lot of twists and turns sonically, emotionally, and stylistically on this record. Play it loud!”
Dub Trio’s third studio album, Another Sound Is Dying, finds drummer Joe Tomino, bassist Stu Brooks and guitarist D.P. Holmes working again with producer/engineer Joel Hamilton. The 14 massive tracks showcase Dub Trio’s chops and vocabulary (all three members are also seasoned session players) as they pummel with wrecking-ball force on tunes that simultaneously embrace metal, dub, punk and reggae while pushing all of the above into dazzlingly unfamiliar areas.
While again a mostly instrumental set, Another Sound Is Dying features a return vocal cameo from Ipecac co-owner/art-rock jack-of-all-trades Mike Patton. The musicians’ first collaboration, “Not Alone,” appeared on Dub Trio’s 2006 album, New Heavy, as well as the eponymous debut that same year from Patton’s Peeping Tom project; and when he took Peeping Tom on the road, Brooks, Tomino and Holmes became the only constant members in Patton’s backing band.
Their 2004 debut album for ROIR, Exploring the Dangers of, testified to Dub Trio’s jaw-dropping live skills: the album was literally recorded as a live-dub experiment. But with New Heavy, the trio made good on their album’s title, creating a metallic K.O. grounded in serious low-end theory. That year’s Peeping Tom tour, in which they shared stages with the likes of Gnarls Barkley and The Who while opening for and being part of the headlining act, proved that Dub Trio’s sound crossed genre and audience barriers as much as it bridged them.
A live album for ROIR, Cool Out And Coexist, kicked off 2007; and between session work—the members have recorded with 50 Cent, Mos Def, Common, the Fugees, Tupac and Matisyahu among others—and tours with artists such as Gogol Bordello, Clutch and Helmet, Dub Trio teamed with Ipecac to unleash Another Sound Is Dying. As much as the album continues the louder, heavier progression of New Heavy, it also finds Dub Trio melding their preferred styles into a sound that’s at once bigger and more cohesive than ever.
