- Samedi Sound System go crazy for all sorts of sounds: from footwork, to trap to bass music, techno and many more besides. Science Project have been enthusiastic producers of instrumental hip hop, more recently some world fusion beats courtesy of a little obsession with India and going back a bit, dubstep, before dubstep became some kind of unhallowed tomb where music gets ritually murdered by cabals of nec’bromancers. Getting the hell away from that massacre allowed Science Project to focus more specifically on another of their favourite sounds and one that also happens to be a core component of the Samedi’s work: dub-reggae. In fact, the two acts discovered they had so much in common that they decided they would collaborate on a project: getting the Samedis to festoon some of Science Projects’s tunes from their 2011 EP Under The Sun and 2012’s Foundation Sounds Vol. II with even more dubby echoes than they had ever draped with been before.

This time round the release is titled - rather prosaically - Samedi Sound System Meets Science Project In Dub. Fortunately these re-jigged science projects roll into the ear much more easily than that title rolls off the tongue. It’s also really interesting to hear these versions side-by-side. The Samedi’s interpretations can be quite subtle. With many of the dub elements already present in the originals, the new interpretations sometimes sound like a remastering rather than a remixing. It gives the EP, unsurprisingly, a more cohesive feel, too. Where Science Project had previously gone for a grab-bag of genres, the Samedis have, for instance, pushed the ambient dance beats of Another Spring into the background, or buried the big, downbeat sounds of Waves in dubby shadows from which Billie Weston’s voice emerges like light from the darkness.

Having said that, there is more than one trick on display, Dub The Gangee takes the ragga elements of the original and emphasises them, for a still loping, but undeniably punchy dancehall feel. The remix of the other newer track, Shoulders Dub Giants does the opposite, bringing with its echoes a breathy, breezy quality that quiets the dancehall beats and also brings forward the tribal, world-music samples in the mix.

The effect is, as on all of this EP is one of subtlety. Samedi Sound System’s reworkings imbue a fresh and mysterious quality on the music. of Science Project and one that I am only too happy to imbibe.

- Chris Cobcroft.