The Asian Dub Foundation do a lot of good work for charity through their ADFED (Asian Dub Foundation Education) Music Technology Workshops. They also do a fair amount of good work for breakbeat, giving it an Asian identity far more credible than that of Punjabi MC, off that Peugeot ad.

Enemy of the Enemy is a nicely varied album and the use of Eastern instruments and sounds really enriches the dance music to the point that you wonder why they aren’t used more often in general. The first three tracks are break-beat techno akin to the Prodigy’s ‘Fat of the Land’, with the tunes centred around electric guitar riffs and industrial samples. The band’s social conscience is also apparent from the start, ‘Fortress Europe’ being a commentary on immigration policy, and the tone seems to be set for the rest of the record.

But with ‘1000 Mirrors’ the music style changes to a laid back melody from none other than the angel-voiced Sinead O’Connor over a understated dub bass-line, reminiscent of Massive Attack with an Eastern flavour. Following on, ‘19 Rebellions’ is Asian drum n bass with a tabla beat to nod your head to and South American overtones, featuring a revolutionary speech about uprisings in Brazilian prisons.

As the album continues it does gets back to bad-boy rapping and deep bass-lines (although none of it too in your face) but the Eastern influence begins to take on a bigger role culminating in ‘Dhol Rinse’, a pleasing instrumental that really gets into the Asian style and changes the tack of the album again.

The following tracks, ‘Basta’ and ‘Cyberbad’, are also instrumentals and nicely chilled out, featuring deep bass-lines and traditional samples to great effect. The title, and last track ‘Enemy of the Enemy’ brings it up a notch but not too far, with some laid back jungle drum n bass and it feels like you have been on a journey with the Asian Dub Foundation that was fraught along the way, but ultimately easy on the shoe leather.

words: Robin Harris