Former PiL member Jah Wobble has been a long-term champion of 'World Music', albeit set against the reggae inspired dub-a-dub-dub sound of his bass. However, it is not only geography that comes in to play on Welcome to My World but musical genres.Some tracks on this album could have been the soundtrack to Doctor Who in the mid-1970s, with its discordant synth runs heralding the emergence of the sea devils from beneath the waves.
Jah Wobble's previous two albums took him on a dub-inspired journey through China and Japan but this outing he has come for the most part back into the northern hemisphere.
Spain and North Africa and India provide the main inspiration, with a quick foray back over the equator into Brazil, and even the urban English 1990s for a few rave-infused tracks.
There are echoes of Miles Davis Sketches of Spain on three tracks while one of the London tracks, Putney, sound like it could have been lifted from Hendrix's Electric Ladyland.
It took me three or four listens to get into this as the first few times I just didn't get it. I've been caught out by Wobble turkey's before - Heart and Soul being a particularly miserable aural experience - and I thought some of the tracks on Welcome to My World were outakes from that. But it is a grower and a curiously addictive album that sounds as if it is soundtrack waiting for a film to be made for it in which a time traveller roams the globe and battles the occassional mortal enemy.
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