Pitch Black remixed by On-U Sound's Adrian Sherwood

Pitch Black's Mike Hodgson has been around the periphery of legendary reggae label On-U Sound for a little while now, so this news is very cool...  

I remember Mike telling me once about how when he lived in Christchurch in the late 1980s, every time his local record store got the latest On-U record release, he used to have to race into town because he had to beat Andrew Penman of Salmonella Dub in to get his hands on it. 

"They say you should never meet your heroes, but for Mike Hodgson of Pitch Black, meeting the legendary Adrian Sherwood has been a transformative experience, leading to creative collaborations that have benefited both of them.

Nearly 30 years after first being mesmerised by OnU Sound’s releases, a cheeky bit of radio ripping serendipitously led to Mike helping Pats Dokter, the label’s official archivist, with his work restoring master tapes, and eventually to him creating visual content for Adrian’s live shows.

A while after this collaboration began, Adrian offered to remix some of Mike’s music, either by his solo project Misled Convoy or his work as Pitch Black, and it’s four cuts by the latter that grace this heavyweight platter.

From the dreamy dub of Transient Transmission to the rolling rhythms of A Doubtful Sound, Pitch Black’s originals have been re-arranged and dubbed to $%># in Adrian’s signature style, with fluid melodies, pounding basslines and vocal samples awash in a wall of effects.

Trumpets by David “Ital Horns” Fullwood bookend the release, haunting in the first track and celebratory in the last, while Doug Wimbish (Tackhead) added an extra bassline to the heaving version of 1000 Mile Drift, which also features the voice of the iconic Lee “Scratch” Perry.

Reflecting on the collaboration, Mike Hodgson says, “the whole experience has been slightly unreal, from working on Adrian’s videos to being in the OnU studio and watching him dub-mixing the tracks I’ve made, something I could never have imagined happening!”

Mike isn’t the only OnU fan in Pitch Black, as a pivotal moment for Paddy was “watching Adrian mixing Tack>head at the Powerstation in 1995 and seeing the cause-and-effect of what he was doing and hearing the unbelievable sounds coming out of the speakers. It was the first time I’d ever seen somebody dub mix like that.”  Out Sept 6, 2024, digital and 10" vinyl