Dreadzone are still in the groove

They were contemporaries of UK acid-house era acts Leftfield, The Orb and Massive Attack, but Dreadzone’s roots reach back to Mick Jones’s urban groove-oriented post-Clash act, Big Audio Dynamite.

Greg Roberts auditioned to become B.A.D’s first drummer in 1984, and when that dissolved in 1990, he took more than keyboardist Dan Donovan, bassis, Leo Williams and sounds-effects operator Don Letts with him. He also took technical expertise, which he employed to great success in Dreadzone. “It was a brilliant learning curve,” he says. “A great band to work with. Joining B.A.D, I got given a drum machine and I learned how to use a sampler and a sequencer, so by the time I’d left B.A.D I was able to write something completely new, with no real restrictions.”

His first post-B.A.D vehicle was Screaming Target, with Letts and Williams. But it was with Dreadzone, which he formed in 1991 with keyboard player and programmer Tim Bran, that Roberts wrote the layered, up-tempo music that assimilated dub, reggae and techno influences with a progressive house sensibility. He ingeniously sampled movie dialogue and had a magpie approach to borrowing from other musical genres. Donovan and Williams were also on board.