Dub Pistols have done everything it's possible to do in a band and still want more. They've toured the world more times than most of us have changed channels, they've spent years breaking America down into tiny, eager pieces via extended jaunts with punk-rock roadshows. They've had their music appear on so many Hollywood films they can't remember them all, though they do remember recording the title track for Y Tu Mama Tambien in Mexico with Molotov and working with Busta Rhymes on the Blade II soundtrack.

They've appeared in Australia and six south-east Asian countries in less than a week and they've played live with Fatboy Slim on New York's Hudson river twelve hours before those two planes flew into the World Trade Center towers, then watched as the "shit hit the fan" from their hotel room across the country in LA. Now, rather more happily, they've recorded the best music of their lives, and they've recorded it with reggae legend and Massive Attack collaborator Horace Andy, ex-Specials hero, Terry Hall, Cali Agent rapper Planet Asia and New York crew Sight Beyond Light. But it wasn't always this way.

A Brief History of Time: Dub Pistols Founder Barry Ashworth in his own words "I started running clubs in 1987, I took over Ziggy's in Streatham when Paul Oakenfold had finished there. Then I did the Monkey Drum, which was where the (Stone) Roses and the (Happy) Mondays used to come when they were in town. I opened a record shop in Covent Garden, which folded, so I started a band called Deja Vu - I really hate that name - and we had a hit record with 'Why Why Why', the old Woodentops song. I went on to run Naked Lunch at the SW1 club and Sprucesters Balls in Kensington with Charlie Chester. Then I did the first Monkey Mafia record with Jon Carter, and from there I moved on to start the Dub Pistols".

Barry originally employed Engineer and Bass player Jason O'Bryan in 1996 as recording began for the Dub Pistols first album "Point Blank", initially hired as engineer and beat programer (On the back of his productions with Wall of Sound act "Ceasefire".) Jason soon became Barry's partner and an integral part of the group, from co-producing, writing and engineering "Cyclone" and "Problem is" and everything in between, to playing Bass guitar live onstage.

Barry continues "Soon afterwards our manager went in for a meeting with Jimmy Iovine of Interscope, he was playing a track we'd done, but he didn't know it was us. He told our manager - who'd gone into see him in his guise as manager of Crystal Method - that he reckoned it was the best record he'd heard in fifteen years. Two days later I was on a plane to LA, first class, and agreed a million dollar deal. It was the start of a beautiful nightmare."

A beautiful nightmare indeed. A nightmare of private jets, stretch limos, and remixing Moby, Korn, Limp Bizkit and a host of others. The Dub Pistols party never stopped but home was always calling. The punk rock guys they toured with in the States might have looked the part, but Barry and the Dub Pistols knew there was more to being punk than having a Mohawk.

"I grew up on The Clash and living in West London," says Barry, "there's always been dub around too, so punk's always been natural for me. Dub Pistols are punk, because punk, as an ethic, means anything goes." And it's that anything goes approach that typifies the band's new album, Six Million Ways To Live, an album where the blood-warm pulse of hip-hop, dub and ska receive a thorough seeing to via the needle-sharp miracle of modern technology. From Horace Andy's dub-soaked, butter-soft croon on album opener 'Crash Crazy', past Cali Agent rapper Planet Asia's hymn to hip-hop on 'Architect', to the future Ibiza anthem at the heart of '3AM''s electro-jazz chill. More upbeat is the dancehall vibe that New Yorkers Sight Beyond Light bring to 'Riptides' and the ska-pop shake of 'Problem Is' with Terry Hall, a track that provoked Xfm's biggest ever listener response when it was aired entirely without permission recently. Make no mistake, this the perfect album to give your stereo the summer work-out it so obviously needs. "We've always been a massive Terry Hall fans," says Barry. "We thought he'd never, ever do another ska record as long as he lived, but he loved the track and recorded the vocals in my front room. As did Horace Andy, who arrived dressed in a gold lame suit."

Lyrically, the album has its dark moments, "Submarine sinks, Concorde falls from the sky, the tallest buildings burn and all the mothers they cry," sings Horace Andy on 'Crazy', while rhymes like "Blowing up the White House like I was an alien, Independence Day cos we ain't seen no liberation" show that Dub Pistols are no say-nothing, do nothing party rockers - these are serious, thoughtful pieces of music. In preparing to record the album the band spent six months making "a load of shit." They tried rock, reggae rock, Georgio Moroder-ish electro, full-on house, then they did 'Architect' with Planet Asia and everything all fell into place.

"The album Six Million Ways to Live has been so deeply thought about and considered, it's not a breakbeat record, not a DJ record, it's a personal thing. We're fighting prejudices, but we refuse to be turned cynical. Were musicians and we want to make what we feel excited about, and what we feel more excited about than than anything else right now is people finally getting the chance to hear 'Six Million Ways To Live'.

This Biography appears courtesy of Distinctive Records



The following review of the album 'Six Million Ways to Live' by the Dub Pistols was written by John Davidson and appears on Popmatters.com

Dub Pistols 'Six Million Ways to Live' (Distinctive Records)

'Six million ways to live, and just as many folks out there trying to express themselves, waiting to be heard. There are as many genres now as there used to be songsmiths. What's a conscientious reviewer to do?

Well, for one thing, help weed the good from the naff. All these sounds, all these voices, you listen and you ask yourself: is this record necessary? If these sounds didn't exist, would anyone miss them? Do they contain a truth that somehow informs me? Do I like the forms and patterns of the sounds themselves? All of which is to say -- is this stuff any good?

Chances are, for the most part you won't find much that changes your existence. Over the course of a life, or even a year, there are only so many weddings and birthdays and funerals, only so many days when you'll meet the love of your life or of the weekend. Most days aren't full of epic grandeur, but hopefully the majority offer small moments to sustain you and offer the sense that it's all worthwhile.

And so with music: the discovery of an artist or band that you know will be with you forever, or at least for a generation or so, it happens but seldom. In between, you're looking for glimpses, something you can relate to, enjoy under its own terms. With a new disc, sometimes it's sufficient to play a few times, enough to enjoy and know you'll be able to wake up the next morning and still respect yourself.

For me, the Dub Pistols offer such pleasures. They are one of a small handful of bands that you sense creating music primarily because they too want to hear what they have to play. In a sense, they are a heartwarming story of DIY. Dub Pistols music is always likely to slip beneath the mainstream radar because it is utterly without compromise. They present a sound-clash of ska and punk, dub and hip-hop, a feast of fat beats laced with slick raps, and whether you like it or not is of no concern to them.

Their new album, Six Million Ways to Live, opens with the fine vocal nuance of guest Horace Andy, primarily known for his work with Massive Attack, and less well known for his prodigious output of progeny -- 16 children from a variety of mothers at last count. Also less well-known is the quality catalogue of solo work that he's produced over a couple of decades or more, work that if you're unfamiliar with you should check out.

"Problem Is" follows, and it features a real-live ghost in the second guest-vocal slot: Terry Hall. Terry Hall, as in the Specials, Fun Boy Three, the Colourfield. That Terry Hall. The result of this particular collaboration is a ska track that both honors Hall's past and recommends his future. Hall is a man who's thrown enough individualistic, stylized music our way over the years that, truth be told, he should be permitted the tranquility of his retirement if he wants, should shun us forever if he feels so inclined. Which is probably what he'll do.

Perhaps the highlight of the album is the title track, a rap tenderly crafted over a beautiful acoustic backing track. Once it's gone, the beats and rhymes get heavier, and while those in the world of rap and hip-hop lay down hours of tracks shouting out credentials as to who's "most street," few, if any of them, offer a sound that so authentically replicates the urban experience as clearly as this.

I once saw the Dub Pistols spin a pre-dawn DJ set in an abandoned warehouse just south of Los Angeles Airport, a gritty urban enclave that was neatly hidden on the outskirts of the golden city. This was around the time of the last Dub Pistols release, 1998's Point Blank, and what most clearly resonates both here and at that time is a sense of defiance in the face of decay. His are street tales told within music, not some ill-conceived boast served at the expense of the music.

Hip-hoppers out there, they ought to take note. This is keeping it real.'