In the same week that a delusional American president publicly expressed his fear of "human-animal hybrids", wayward musical and spiritual globalist Jah Wobble arrived in Vancouver with his English Roots Band and a most vexing new form of life: traditional English folk dub. For most, Wobble is perhaps best known as the charismatic teen whose bass experimentation lent Public Image Ltd. a revolutionary bottom end for its best two albums, Public Image and Metal Box. Alternately, he's the world-music innovator with the crazy-ass stare whose dance ensemble Invaders of the Heart scored a huge smash with "Visions of You" in the early '90s.

It's probably fair to assume that the people attending this show—and there was quite a crowd, in light of our citywide epidemic of seasonal affective disorder—were familiar with the bits of Wobble's career that fall between the big-time post-punk escapades and the indelible dance hits. Wobble's idiom is and always will be dub, so there was no shortage of spinning Commercial Drive types who came complete with the attendant tang of Tiger Balm and armpit. Meanwhile, Wobble's collaborations with the headier On U Sound syndicate and jazz aliens such as Pharoah Sanders attracted a more studious brand of stoners who were most likely counting the frequently bizarre time signatures on their fingers.

Certainly all camps left the show feeling uplifted by the brief but largely improvised set. Wobble seamlessly navigated his band—featuring vocalists Liz Carter and Clea Llewellyn—between a cosmic take on traditional folk ("Unquiet Grave", "Byker Hill"), and the more obvious territory he's been staking out for years. It takes a supernatural adeptness to blend such Fairport Unconventional fare with, for instance, Dawn Penn's reggae chestnut "No, No, No". When Wobble himself sang "Visions of You", the improbable nature of the man became clear: his flat cockney bark and weirdly uncertain phrasing were at odds with the liquid mobility and unerring sense of time and space coming from his instrument. Moon-faced, shaven-headed, his eyes simultaneously beady and huge, Wobble has of late cultivated the East End gangster look favoured by most English street urchins made good. As "Rocky Road to Dublin" sped to a manic climax, Wobble bit down on the notes with grim-faced assurance. The band hung on his every move. When Wobble stretched the end of "Visions of You" to its breaking point, guitarist Chris Cookson responded with a final, anxious guitar solo that spoke directly to his minder's seemingly obsessive attenuation of the song. Drummer Mark Sanders went purple during "Primary", which was driven into stormy speed-folk territory, and turned his stricken eyes toward his leader, desperate for mercy. Wobble, meanwhile, was nearly upstaged by Jean-Pierre Rasle, who appeared from the wings for "Troubadour" carrying a French small pipe, which looks like a flayed wombat with wooden hindquarters. Mellifluous yet droney, it was thrillingly out of this world.

It must have taken balls of brass to volunteer for the opening slot, but Calamalka delivered a too-brief set that climaxed with the suitably Can-like "Patton's Sandals". By then, the Georgia Straight faves had managed to pull off quite a coup: getting people to dance, while announcing its place in a lineage that stretches back to Wobble, and all the other krautrock-loving white punks on dub who came brawling out of London's late '70s dole queues. Wonderful.

Georgia Straight, February 2006