Tim Love Lee: Fully Bearded: 15 Years of Tummy Touch Records in Dub
Started in 1996 in London, Tummy Touch Records made a name for themselves by releasing quirky dance and downtempo records. Artists like Groove Armada, Tom Vek, and Patrick and Eugene have called the label home. Now the label founder, Tim “Love” Lee chronicles the label’s first decade and a half with a compilation of remixes.
Despite running a label specializing in dance and downtempo records, Fully Bearded is entirely populated with dub remixes. The compilation includes Lee’s first commercially released dub remix, 1994’s “One” by Bud Bongo. The track features hard grooving funk drums, bongos, and train whistle. Amazingly, 17 years after its release it seems as relevant today as it did then.
The compilation does not only feature previously released remixes. As a matter of fact, Fully Bearded mostly features unreleased tracks like a dub remix of Groove Armada’s “Shameless” from their most recent album, Black Light. Lee takes the Bryan Ferry‘s haunting vocal line and replaces Groove Armada’s shimmering dance production and replaces it with dub inspired downtempo.
Where the compilation fails is on the more rock oriented tracks. When Lee attempts to flip Striplight‘s “No Search, No Entry” into a dub track, it just ends up sounding messy and cluttered.
Luckily only three of the tracks really fall into that category; as for the other track on the album, they deliver the hard groovin dub that listeners expect from Love.
Rating: 7.3/10
MP3: Bud Bongo “Someone (Tim “Love” Lee Dub)”
Buy: iTunes
Tim Love Lee: Fully Bearded: 15 Years of Tummy Touch Records in Dub
