Icehouse goes DubHOUSE

Icehouse is going DubHOUSE in December. For two shows, the iconic band is going reggae-bluebeat 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.

Band founder Iva Davies has long admitted that one of his dreams has been to be a guitar player in a reggae band.

He recalls in a media release that his interest in reggae beginning back in 1983 when Icehouse played a German festival with reggae legend Peter Tosh. “Ever since I saw Peter on stage, just happily playing, I wondered what it would feel like to be that relaxed!” Iva remembers. After that the band would throw reggae feels to parts of Can’t Help Myself onstage and occasionally throw in bluebeat nods to other songs.

“This year, we started working again with European label Repertoire and its founder, Thomas Neelsen, who talked to me about putting out

a collection of extended and 12” mixes which we have released here through iTunes. As I went back over the various mixes, 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”.

Icehouse today confirmed it will do an all-dub set at two club shows – at the Esplanade in Melbourne on Wednesday December 4 and the Oxford Art Factory in Sydney on Saturday December 7.