NEWS: Jah Wobble and the Invaders of the Heart @ The Cluny

Image: Jah Wobble by Alex Hurst

The man born John Joseph Wardle makes a welcome return to Newcastle with his dazzling Invaders of the Heart on Thursday 6^th February. After his formative years spent holding down the bottom end in Public Image Limited, this bulwark of the bass-bin has developed a resolutely progressive and prolific career as an in-demand session musician and solo artist.

Now into his fourth decade of writing and recording, he has worked with a veritable who’s who of artists across a range of genres including Baaba Maal, Bjork, Brian Eno, Sinead O’Connor, Can’s Holger Czukay, U2’s The Edge and Primal Scream – he plays the slinky rubber band bass part on Higher Than The Sun – A Dub Symphony, which let’s be honest, takes an already genius track into orbit.

Always a spellbinding live performer, irrespective of which version of Jah Wobble you’re seeing, he works as the linchpin within the Invaders of the Heart, nailing things down to allow the assembled virtuoso musicians to stay loose and generate a boundless spectrum of sonic textures; eclectic and unpredictable, one minute they’re emitting a cavernous dub fantasy, the next they’ve flitted to a stonking cover of Liquidator or an Eastern-flavoured ambient jam, the overall effect being disorienting, discombobulating and unadulteratedly euphoric.

Jah Wobble and The Invaders of the Heart are at The Cluny, Newcastle on Thursday 6th February