Live Review

Dub Pistols – Boileroom, Guildford

• 12th Oct 2010

With Barry Ashworth from the Dub Pistols providing my bona fides to the doormen I was in. As its Ronseal name suggests, The Boileroom is a bijou venue and as a local I’m probably accustomed to its quaint charm. The first impression had possibly underwhelmed Barry: “It’s a bit small but we can work with that. We can do small.” And ‘do it’ they did. At the end of the night they’d left this venue pretty much pistol whipped. For the Dub Pistols this was a stop on their international ReHash tour promoting the ReHash remix album and they came out all guns blazing.

There was not much besuited elbow room on stage, and an ever present slapstick threat in the shape of a trombone slider, but still the Dub Pistols put an impressive amount of dynamism into their performance and were on their toes for the whole of a set that weighed in at just under an hour. Barry looked like he managed to run a marathon just covering front to back of the stage as it was. Given the atmosphere that built up and the amount of exertion in those tonic suits, I think these boys could give Lee Evans’ dry cleaner a run for his money.

Almost at the very moment they began, what had only previously been a liberally populated but cosy room, turned into a solid, broiling, pit of humanity. At one point I was nearly backed onto the Roots Brothers’ turntables. The in-house PA was tweaked and turned up to ‘eleven’ and seemed to really shake the room out. This lead to the tragicomic sight of people’s unattended pints hoping up to, and over, the drinks ledge at the back of the room; like so many Red Stripe lemmings. For me I could have had it even louder because the dub bass in their songs gives solidity and creates a whole that you don’t expect from a live performance. In lesser hands it could have been a muddy mess but the whole set was so tight and up front it kept everybody jumping.

With the exception of a – by comparison – breather when the man on brass took lead vocals, it was pure exuberance. There is absolutely no treading water here. Considering the depth of their back catalogue and the variety of guested records they’ve put out previously, I can appreciate that the selection policy here was focused entirely on the live show – could that be Barry’s D.J. D.N.A. showing through? You’d have to fall back on albums and single releases and remixes if you want to appreciate such gems as, say, Speed of Light, but to me that is the best possible approach. When confronted with a small, dark, hot room, the best option is to jump about and make a hell of a noise.