fR314 PAGE 17 2/7/09 16:23 Page 1
root salad
17 f
Invisible System
Dan Harper’s Ethiopian mix-up project led to Dub
Colossus. Jamie Renton hears how it all evolved.
E
verything is connected, all guided
by an invisible system that joins the
dots and brings together the
unlikeliest elements to create a
strange and beautiful whole. Invisible
System is the musical alias of producer/
multi-instrumentalist Dan Harper, who
has, with the recently released Punt
(Harper Diabate Records; see fR313),
produced a startlingly original
combination of Ethiopian roots and pop
with dub, electronica and psychedelic
rock. “Strange connections have
happened throughout my life,” he says,
explaining how the concept of the
invisible system guides his work. “When I
write music, I never plan what I’m going
to do, I never think ‘I want something
that sounds like this or that’. I know
when the time’s right, I just go into the
studio and the stuff pours out. That’s
what I love about music, it just seems to
come from nowhere.”
Dan’s been an inveterate studio tin-
kerer since his childhood in Somerset,
where he dreamed of faraway places. “I’ve
always had a yearning to go to Africa,” he
tells me. “I don’t know why.” He finally
made it to Mali in 1999, working on envi-
ronmental projects out in the Sahara and
meeting his wife in the process. Having
Dan Harper
spent three tough but rewarding years out
there he moved on to Ethiopia, where he
moud down just to listen to a couple of to say how much he liked the music he
set up his home-made studio and started
tracks he was working on and was as sur- heard there. Dan, never one to miss an off-
checking out the local sounds.
prised as anyone when this national musi- the-wall musical opportunity, invited The
This was the beginnings of what cal institution agreed to add his voice to Captain to contribute and there he is
became the album. Dan would invite local the project. The result is his gripping per- adding wigged-out guitar to the Ethio soul/
musicians and singers into his studio and formance on the track Melkam Kehonelish drum ‘n’ bass/ rock collision of the closing
just let them play. “They’d ask me, ‘What do – If That Is What You Want, unsurprisingly Dankira : Dance City Boy. He met Justin
you want me to do?’” he recalls. “And I’d one of the album’s high points and includ- Adams and Juldeh Camara (see fR297) via a
say, ‘I don’t want you to do anything… just ed on this issue’s fRoots 33 CD. chance encounter with Robert Plant, with
do what you feel’. He’d record their impro-
Many of the musicians and singers
whom Justin was playing guitar at the time;
visations and combine them with loops,
involved subsequently appeared on the
and Baka Beyond’s Martin Cradick (see
beats, spontaneous musical creations of his
acclaimed Dub Colossus project (see fR304).
fR203) lives nearby. Wherever he came
own and others, in a process he likens to
Dan generously invited DC main man
upon a musician who wanted to partici-
sculpture. But don’t let the idea of ‘sound Count Dubulah over to Ethiopia, intro-
pate, Dan found a way to make it happen.
sculpture’ put you off, the results couldn’t duced him to his network of local musi-
be further away from art house prissiness. cians and let him use his studio. Unsurpris-
Dan has a taste for the rough and the raw ingly then, Punt and DC’s album A Town
and hooked up with some of the finest Called Addis (Real World) share some quali- S
o far Invisible System have given only
one live performance, which was
back in Addis, with Dub Colossus as
the support act. What Dan would
roots musicians Ethiopia has to offer. ties, but the Invisible System CD is wilder, love is to perform more but, given that he
There was Desta Fikra, who appears
more diverse and challenging, less rooted has no record company or management
on the album’s first and final tracks. Dan
in dub and with none of the free spirit jazz behind him and is funding and running the
discovered her singing over a nasty sound-
to be found on the Dub Colossus record- show entirely by himself (and has never
ing keyboard in a local bar. “I trust my ears
ings. Instead Dan takes things to the fur- given up his day job), this has so far proved
and I liked her voice straight away. It had a
thest reaches of rock, with members of The impossible. Undeterred and undaunted he
soft quality to it.” Then there was the
Mission, Ozric Tentacles, even The carries on moving and developing and
mighty Ethio soul king Mahmoud Ahmed
Damned’s Captain Sensible adding noise always has a number of different projects
(see fR268). “He was a real old gentleman.
and disturbance to what is categorically on the boil. Currently he’s working on an
What was amazing was the faces of the
not your typical world music coffee table/ album with local reggae musicians (local to
Ethiopians who were in the studio when
dinner party background music CD. Somerset, not Ethiopia that is), and next?
he walked in. Their jaws practically hit the The rockier stuff was added once Dan
Well, I’d imagine he’ll go wherever the
ground. It was as if James Brown had was back in the UK. Sensible, for example,
Invisible System leads him.
entered the room!” Dan had invited Mah- contacted him through his MySpace page
www.myspace.com/invisiblesystem F
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