Jay Glass Dubs - Clandestine Cadence (Whispered Tales from a Wandering Fire) (2023)

Athenian mystic Jay Glass Dubs summons the timeless spirits of Greek Roma music in a mesmerising tribute to the obscure tapes and psychedelic swelter of the Eleonas flea market. Featuring flute by Foteini Korre (Wild Terrier Orchestra), it’s a proper wild ride, heavily recommended if yr into Bryn Jones’ E.g Oblique Graph, Christos Chondropoulos, Craig Leon’s Nommos, or Mikel Rouse’s cult Linndrum odyssey ‘Quorum’.

On a typically roasting early summer day of ‘22 in Athens' Eleonas district, Jay Glass Dubs and Foteini Korre introduced Reel Torque to its mind-blowing sprawl of flea market traders flogging everything from Roma tapes and Greek vinyl nuggets to toiletries and Souvlaki. The lowkey carnivalesque atmosphere of myriad sound systems pumping unknowable future-primitive melodies and rhythms would stoke imaginations, prompting JGD to rework recordings of favourite tape finds within his singular style of inverted dub and loop chicanery.

Layered with faithful Ney flute improvisations by Jay’s Wild Terrier Orchestra bandmate, Fotini Korre, the results found on ‘Clandestine Cadence (Whispered Tales from a Wandering Fire)’ are an extraordinary 45 minute session without direct comparison, blurring distinctions between mixtape, collage, and original composition with a richly impressionistic effect that uproots and plunges listeners deep into another world while tapping into millennia-old traditional modes of expression that link Indian and Eurasian musics and beyond.

The results form one of a handful of original works, rather than mixtapes, proper, on Reel Torque. From an opening passage of heat-sick drone and drums, Jay locks into a pendulous traction of crashing Linndrum and instrumental loops teased with a dubwise hands-on-desk approach, transitioning to spine-shivering flute and synth duets, and thrumming industrial-dub versions of Romani styles, eventually shoring up in heart-in-mouth romantic meditation and awesome dub roil.

When attempting to revisit the flea market in 2023 with a Scottish gnostic from 12th Isle, we arrived too late and nearly died when crossing the road to its site, which we’ll take as an omen not to fuck with the flea market, and hold its treasures in the highest regard.

TIP!