For the reggae-bluebeat show, Icehouse is bringing in a brass section and extra vocalists. It’ll giving a Caribbean dose of its classic hits, dig deeper into the dub elements of some of its past mixes, and possibly throw in some covers.
Although best known for its orchestral pop and rock sounds, leader Iva Davies says there’s been a dub element in some of their songs. His long time ambition has been to play guitar in a reggae band, he says, since Icehouse played a German festival in 1983 with Peter Tosh.
This year while Davies was compiling a collection of extended and 12” mixes for the European label Repertoire, “I found myself gravitating again and again to the more Dub versions of the songs and my desire to be the chukka-man (reggae guitar) kept coming back. So I thought: why not have some fun and see how a couple of my songs would sound if I got the band to play them in a dub-meets-reggae-meets-pop style. And it just grew from there – this path has opened up a kind of ‘dancehall-party’ in the band and the music”.
