Dominick Fernow hits the jungle once more in his ritual ambient dub form as Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement – this time with a more ecological message than the usual voodoo undertones. He says it’s “a turning point for RSE in that it starts to deal specifically with the consequences of the Panama Canal and the controversial battle with malaria”.
Fernow has sidestepped his own Hospital Productions this time to release the 7-inch on Low Jack’s Les Disques de la Bretagne label, after teaming up with Low Jack last year on the insectoid dub dread LP Red Ants Genesis.
Venus Flytrap Exotica is a typically evocative EP title, but the two track names (Bridgetown Dub and Price To Pay) can’t compete with past world-building titles such as ‘Crustaceans Rise From Salt Water For Vengeance’ or ‘Jungle Is a Shapeshifter’. Or what about this one: ‘When Spotted They Are Killed On Sight and Hung Up So That the Evil Spirit Will Be Carried Away By Travellers’?
Bullshit fickle superficiality by me aside, Venus Flytrap Exotica is another dense, humid, scuttling bit of dub menace, with ‘Bridgetown Dub’’s sub bass pulse punctured by far-off thunderstorms and digital slice effects. ‘Price To Pay’ is an undergrowth tribal death rattle, with some light from warm synth chords piercing through the canopy. It’s a 7-inch so time is of the essence, but both of these tracks could easily be spun out for a half-hour each, like many other surrealist hypno-dread pieces in the Enslavement universe.
Moo Kid 