Minnelli, Elijah: Clams as a Main Meal LP

One of the weirdest gadges in UK dub flexes his authority on unique concoctions of roots reggae, digidub, cumbia, and folksy chamber drone for the Breadminster Board of Abstinence. big tipped FFO Nearly God, Tapes Lee “Scratch” Perry & The Congos, Elysia Crampton, DINTE archives.

In cool pursuit of his reggae-voiced folk covers LP for FatCat, ‘Perpetual Musk’ - and 12”s for Accidental Meetings, Elijah Minnelli keeps it ideally offbeat with a deft, hands-on concision and deeply rooted steez throughout ‘Clams As A Main Meal.’ There’s a charmingly daft backstory involving oysters, frisky fictional villagers, and burnt-out hippies, that gives the LP its title, but let’s focus on the music here.

It’s dead special stuff, surely certified by Dennis Bovell chiming in like all members of The Congos at once in the swaying harmonies knit to nyabinghi drums in ‘Canaan Land' somehow sounding like a score to an Emir Kusturica film, while Welsh singer Carwyn Ellis helps characterise Minnelli’s dare-to-differ audness on the sea-legged cumbia shanty ‘Donna Donna (Chwerthin)’ which clearly suits their lilt of their mother tongue.

Elsewhere the producer’s feted dub tekkerz and feel for proper folk wise dub groove really come into play, in step from the jaw harp twang and jaw bone friction dematerialised in ‘Sumptuous Promise,’ thru a heavy lamenting ‘Watercraft Apologist’ that wouldn’t sound out of place in a Mark Jenkin flick, to the insectoid digidub of ‘Calopify Now!,’ gently psychoactive cumbia of ‘Bomb the Green Belt,’ and ghostly chamber keen of ‘Long Conifer.’ Play it over and again!