The collective Wobble/Wardle family turn on, tune in and drop an album of psurprising psuccour.

WOBBLEMANIA?

Turn your back for an instant, and Wobble’s got another record out, and here, with his sons, who make up the band, Tian Qiyi, it seems they confirm and conform to the same prodigious work ethic. But the Beatles, eh, who’da thunk the doyen of dub bass would have much in common with the Hey Jude hitmakers? Well, both more and less than you expect.

MUSODIVERSE FUSION

Quick catch up, John Tian Qi Wardle and Charlie Tian Yi Wardle are the sons of Wobble, their middle names the clue to the chosen band name. With a Chinese mother, herself an acclaimed musician, they are determinedly east pointed, plying a musodiverse fusion of traditional Chinese music/instrumentation with jazz, reggae, and electronic music. Dad is often around as well, to apply his idiosyncratic foundation stones.

We liked their last release. Dad needs no introducing, and we like him too. But why the Beatles? This is what Wobble says about Strawberry Field Forever, possibly the album centrepiece: “This is the one that started everything for me – the song that opened my psyche as a small boy in the East End… I don’t think we’ve tried to compete with the original. What we’ve done, I hope, is honour the mystery of it.“

That sorta sums it up, as these are never replicas and nor are they karaoke. And, rather than the hits, Strawberry Fields aside, this is more a diverse and deeper dig into the more transcendental side of the Liverpool group. Which, understandably, given that word, showcases as much the writing of George Harrison as of Lennon/McCartney, with four of his against five of theirs. There is also a version of the only release credited to all four members of the band.

EASTERN TROPES AMPLIFIED

Tomorrow Never Knows may not be the first psychedelic song ever, but was certainly the first produced by the Beatles, and thus makes for a worthy opener. If the original 1966 (1966!!!) version was a rum ‘un for those just expecting more Merseybeat, the Wardle family here amplify all the eastern tropes that made it then so groundbreaking. Driving and repetitive motorik bass leads, over a legion of drones and a propulsive clatter of drums.

The vocal sound strays little from the echo-textured and treated phasing effect that John Lennon employed, but the master stroke is the exoticism of the erhu and yangquin. The two-stringed Chinese bowed fiddle the Chinese hammered dulcimer respectively, they carry flavours of sitar, but without the, sixty years on, cliche that instrument can so often impart.

Strawberry Fields Forever dips further into the same template, with lashings of Chinese percussion, and what sounds like flute, if heavily distorted. The time signature plays merry hell with your synapses. A first listen might prove challenging, the second less so, until it all seems as natural and unforced as can be. I can only imagine how it might sound, should you be in the habit of any of the bad habits of the day, indulging for old times sake.

A clang of what actually may be sitar, irrespective my earlier comment, then opens the gates for that most skipped song in Beatles history, most vinyl copies of Sgt Pepper having a deep groove between this and When I’m 64. Yes, it’s the much maligned Within And Without You. You know, here it works and works well, largely on account of the arrangement, which, in present company, is entirely in character and on point. Heck, 59 years of prejudice gone, just like that……

DUBBY & DEEPLY DIPPY

Back to Lennon-McCartney now for I Am The Walrus, it now becoming clear which of those two songwriters Wobble veers more toward. (Put it this way, there’s no Yesterday or the aforesaid 64 here!) It starts with dubby bass and drums, and is deeply dippy. It floats and frolics all over the space available, the bass the only gravitational pull. Those bad habits or no, by now you might be checking your coffee cup for any telltale signs of spiking. It would be a bit much as a stand alone, I dare say, but, by virtue of the slow spoon in of weird, it’s just dandy. Man. Especially the chair falling down in the pantry percussive splatter with which it ends.

Norwegian Wood is more Navsari Wood, yet gets also graced by a folk-rock rusticism, courtesy the loping bass and the Swarby erhu accompaniment. It is an oddly successful match, if somewhat discombobulating. The percussion is wonderfully wild. By now your head is about ready for the run, now, of Harrisongs, SWIDT, that loads the second half of the set. Blue Jay way, first, which is the closest to 21st century orthodoxy yet , at least in the post-punk scaffolding set up around it, it capable of slotting in well alongside anything from Metal Box, at least the Wobble/Levine revised version thereof. Recognisable to the Magical Mystery Tour version? Less so.

RESONATING BASS & PERCUSSION

I confess to never having heard The Inner Light, Harrison’s b-side to Lady Madonna. It sounds quite a jolly tune, set here over initially cascading chimes, ahead becoming largely an exercise in world trance ethno-fusion, being largely instrumental. It is also the longest track here, edging on 7 minutes.I still haven’t heard the original, uncertain I dare. Love You To was Harrison’s first foray into sitars and tablas, again from Revolver. My sister had the album, but I fear she applied the same skip as I, on the band’s next release. It’s actually OK, and the version here is lively and fun, resonating around the bass and percussive patterns. You could even, if so desiring, dance to it, and, without the annoying fade that was insisted upon, for the original, it peters out with aplomb, without palling.

Flying is that rarity, not only a Beatles instrumental, but the sole Lennon/McCartney/Harrison/Starkey credit in the moptop’s canon. Tucked away on the Magical Mystery Tour soundtrack, and separated from the technicolour graphics of the film, smacks of filler. Wobble and sons won’t accede to that, no, sir, and it becomes a gorgeous slab of dub, plated to perfection, the erhu skittering and sliding languidly over the deep footprint of subterranean bass. As the only track without much overt “look, it’s The Beatles” about it, it is all, if short, killer. Rain, a final Lennon/McCartney cut, if, again, clearly more John than Paul, closes the album. After the bold flourish ahead it, strangely it falls a bit flat, however much the trio endeavour to fit it with max Owsley. I’d have slotted it ahead the instrumental, but, in the big picture, that’s still only a minor gripe.

MAGIC & MYSTERY

I think you possibly have to be in the right time and place for this one. The wrong mindset will swiftly find it annoying. Yet, if you can find that nirvana, naturally or otherwise, it becomes a splendidly odd curio, with more charm than you might expect. Likely not one for Vera, Chuck or Dave, but if you like your Beatles at their more wackily experimental, all magic and mystery, you’ll love the further alchemies grafted on, by the family Wardle.

Try Tomorrow Never Knows:

Jah Wobble: Website

Tian Qiri: Website

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