“I might be tensed up before a show, and during soundcheck I’ll be doing very fast tricky little bass lines — bursting with energy,” Wobble continues. “Then the music will start to take hold and calm me down into a more mid-tempo vibe. To me, this music represents the big mind, the greater mind, the cosmic mind, if you like. And that mind is there all the time. It never goes away no matter how shitty you might be feeling. The overall reality is that within your little, relative self, that big self — the generous, spiritual core of your being — never really goes away.” Zen dub, a term Wobble has used to describe his ambient work when pressed to do so, seems a fitting tag.
There are parallels in other, earlier types of music. Miles Davis’s slow, breathing masterpiece Kind of Blue (Columbia) is an album everyone — regardless of musical preferences — should own. Hard-assed as Miles could be, the spare, warm compositions on Kind of Blue touch listeners’ “bigger selves” as the gentle, modal harmonies unfurl in sheets and textures comparable to the ambient work of Eno and Wobble. One could even make an argument for the album as the first true ambient recording, since it swings with unhurried gentility and grace.
It’s no surprise that Davis’s music has inspired Wobble. “I listen to composers who are very modal,” he allows. “Most of my bass lines are in very fixed modes. There’s something about that approach I find calming and centering.
“When I was in Public Image Limited, I was introduced to Miles Davis’s music. That was just completely amazing. You could hear the bass line quite clearly, and it was modal. Playing that way, it’s possible to get many shades of dark and light. Its no wonder Debussy liked the modal thing and it became a counterpart in some æsthetic way to the Impressionist painters. That mixture of dark and light, rather than the mathematical thing you get with Bach or with the perfect little pop song, is very magical and human. I can really admire the craft of great songwriting. I can’t pick fault with certain pieces of classical music or music that’s tuneful and uses classic Western tonality, but I can have too much of it very quickly.
“Songs on Mu like ‘Buddha of Compassion,’ they really are like breathing. There’s an openness, and even the low-register flutes and saxes are mixed in that way, so you can absorb the totality of it if you choose to. It’s democratic, and that to me is the true spirit of dub. You can have the vocals placed so they sound very wide but also bedded well down in the mix. And suddenly a hi-hat can come at you and move left to right. Events can happen and sounds can evolve at their own pace.”
Wobble had planned to record Mu in Dolby 5.1 surround sound, “but then we realized that only six guys in all of England have it,” he says, chuckling, “and we reverted to stereo. But I like 5.1 because it gives you a wider palette to paint with. The idea of things mutating around you, where vocals disappear — that’s the obvious way for this music to ultimately go.”
