Adrian Sherwood

Very few musicians have enjoyed careers as interesting and influential as Adrian Sherwood, an English mastermind for curating dub who has gone on to make engrossing records of his own. When Sherwood was only an enthusiastic teenager, he launched a series of record labels that helped jumpstart or widen the careers of Prince Far I and Black Uhuru. His subsequent On-U Sound became one of the world’s most vital dub imprints, with the likes of Little Annie and African Head Charge moving through its ranks. Meanwhile, Sherwood was building and joining collectives, starting the great Dub Syndicate and—with his expert understanding of bass tone and sonic layering—becoming a crucial consultant in the worlds of industrial and post-punk. “I didn’t see any point in following,” he once told Red Bull Music Academy. “The one thing I learned early on was that you’ve got to have your own sound.”

He has followed that instinct on a series of commanding solo records, beginning with 2003’s collaborator-rich Never Trust a Hippy and continuing to 2025’s massively designed and meticulously built The Collapse of Everything. “The Well Is Poisoned” is a dub death march, drums ricocheting off haunted synthesizers and tense strings. “Battles Without Honour and Humanity” feels like dub for the first post-apocalyptic morning, the sun rising on a scene of chaos. But there is still a sense of play here for Sherwood, an incessant collaborator after a half-century of revolutionary work. With its neon guitar, metallic percussion, and sampled airhorn, “The Grand Designer” juggles the past and future, borrowing familiar elements to make uncanny new creations. That ability, after all, is what has made Sherwood’s career so singular.