It’s not every day that you find your evening’s work has gone global, but that’s exactly what happened to Lighthouse Senior Sound Technician Josh Ord after the recent Jah Wobble show in the Theatre.
Following the gig, which made as big an impression on the band as it did on the rapt audience, Wobble contacted Lighthouse to ask for the sound files of the show with a view to releasing two tracks to promote a US tour in July.
The single – Careering and No Birds (Do Sing) Live at the Lighthouse 2024 – has now been released on Cleopatra Records and is available on major music streaming platforms.
“It was definitely a gig to remember,” says Josh, who graduated from the Lighthouse Young Technicians course in 2021 and rejoined the team earlier this year.
“We came into work not really sure what to expect from the day. Jah actually never did a sound check – which I was assured was normal for him – so it was all a little touch and go. I was told that he’d explain to me what he wanted while he was on stage and basically that’s what happened.”
Appearing without a support band, Wobble took the stage and sat down leaving the rest of the band to get into their groove before taking his place at the mic and leading from the front. The show was billed as Metal Box In Dub, a deconstruction of PiL’s second album, but it encompassed so much more, ranging from post punk to jazz, dub, world music, and a genuinely startling take on Swan Lake, not to mention his between song pronouncements in which he quoted Shakespeare and took the mickey out of his band.
He also coached Josh from the stage, asking him to turn up the bass so loud to the point of discomfort, and to use an envelope filter to make the sound sweep as though the band is circling in a helicopter.
“A big thanks to all of you for doing such a great job,” said Wobble a few days after the show. “We really like the tape, thank you so much.”
Bassist/producer Wobble, real name John Wardle, is widely revered as a music maverick. Best known, arguably, from the time he served with his friend John Lydon’s post-Sex Pistols collective Public Image Ltd, he has a wealth of credits to his name, not least a Mercury Prize nomination and a no-barriers approach to music making, exploring genres from Eastern funk to Japanese dub and ambient sounds, collaborating with artists including Bill Laswell and Brian Eno.
His own band, Invaders of the Heart, have been at it since 1982 and it was with their latest incarnation, plus former Siouxsie and the Banshees guitarist Jon Klein, that Wobble appeared at Lighthouse.
Careering and No Birds (Do Sing) Live at the Lighthouse 2024 is available at https://open.spotify.com/album/2ci97PBwa80t9E07e5sMJU
(NC)