Asian Dub Foundation have been raging against the machinery of oppression and injustice for so long, it is sometimes easy to forget that this multicultural British crew are also one of the most musically inventive, explosively exciting live bands on the planet.
During their 15 years together, ADF's fusion of punk rock, electronic beats, reggae, bhangra and hip-hop has attracted many famous fans, from Primal Scream to Radiohead, Sinead O'Connor to Chuck D, all former touring partners and studio collaborators. Meanwhile, this ever-evolving collective continue to expand their agenda, dabbling in soundtracks and operas while taking their fiery mix of music and social activism to far-flung places where conventional western rock bands rarely tour: Morocco, India, Cuba and the shanty towns of Brazil.
ADF's ninth studio album, The History of Now, plays down their club-friendly dancefloor roots and foregrounds their current strength as a muscular, multi-layered, red-blooded rock'n'roll band. According to the guitarist Steve "Chandrasonic" Savale, the album is only marginally political, touching on themes of technology, social networking, native land rights and financial crisis. But that didn't stop amateur filmmakers from using the title track to soundtrack footage of the Egyptian street protests in unofficial YouTube clips.
"The song isn't about that, but musically it just works perfectly," Savale grins. "It is quite aggressive with a sort of punky, north African feel. The lyrics aren't necessarily connected with that at all, but music can be reinterpreted by events. A great musician is kind of an unintentional sociologist. If you are an artist observing what is going on in the world, and you let that flow through your art, you might even end up predicting events."
Music and politics have always been inextricably linked for Asian Dub Foundation. They recorded a stirring single and campaigned intensely for the release of Satpal Ram, a British man jailed in 1987 for killing a racist attacker in self-defence, then helped him find work when he was finally paroled. Other ADF songs have touched on British imperialism in India, domestic violence, asylum laws and police brutality. But Savale insists the band's reputation as angry radicals is too lazy and limiting, overlooking their broad musical and lyrical range.
"There are only two tracks on the new album that I would say are directly attached to an issue," he insists. "One is Where's All the Money Gone? Well, everyone thinks that, so you could call it political but it's totally universal. The other one is This Land Is Not for Sale, which is about indigenous peoples in Mexico. But the rest of the album is far more universal. Our problem is, we could release an album of one of us cutting our toenails and people would call it political."
Formed in the mid-1990s, ADF grew out of Community Music, a series of workshops on electronic music held in deprived areas of East London by the group's co-founders Aniruddha Das and John Pandit, aka Doctor Das and Pandit G. A lifelong political activist who turned down an MBE award from the British government a decade ago, partly because the full name of the award contained the incendiary word "empire", Das finally left the band in 2008 to concentrate on his own projects. But Savale insists ADF still firmly believe music can be a force for social good, citing as evidence the six-part Al Jazeera series he made in 2009 called Music of Resistance.
"I'm still very much involved," Savale says, "still connected to groups who are rooted in trying to change their environment, while at the same time making good music as well. But the whole music workshop thing is probably not relevant to us any more because I don't think it's that relevant in Britain any more. When we started in the 1990s, it was an unusual thing to do, take a sampler into a youth club. But we've been undercut because kids now have a million ways to make music. They can make music on their phone, or their Xbox."
In 2006, ADF pushed their creative boundaries further by accepting a commission from the English National Opera in London to compose Gaddafi: A Living Myth, a lurid electro-punk musical about the Libyan dictator. Most reviews were mercilessly negative, but Savale insists the experience was personally enriching and educational.
"It was political correctness gone mad, I don't mind saying that!" he laughs. "It was the worst aspects of multiculturalism. I don't even like opera! I don't know anything about it. I can't read or write music! But I got to go to Libya and Egypt; I met some very strange people, and I had the oddest conversations. I didn't meet Qaddafi, but I was in a room when he rang. And I met his son, in a huge house with an enormous back garden where he has a Siberian white tiger, a black panther and a whole load of falcons. I had the strangest journey of my life."
When I first interviewed ADF in the late 1990s, they were fervently campaigning against the rising tide of white racist politicians in East London. In 2011, under the shadow of Iraq and Afghanistan, does the landscape look better or worse to these veteran cultural commentators?
"Obviously, some things are much better. It would be silly to deny that," Savale nods. "But now Islamophobia has been stirred into the pot; the notion of the enemy within being Muslims has made the whole thing more complex. However naïve it sounds, I'm totally for the post-racial society. I don't normally agree with anything David Cameron says, but he did make a point that multiculturalism actually breaks people off from each other by incentivising them to keep apart. But then he linked multiculturalism to terrorism, which is just bonkers, without any mention of a war that has killed a few hundred thousand Muslims."
They may address heavyweight issues, but ADF's music is essentially a positive celebration of free expression, cultural diversity and people power. Looking at the upheavals in Egypt, Libya and neighbouring countries, Savale cannot help but be naturally optimistic.
"Of course, it depends whether it's 1989 or 1979 all over again," he nods. "I'm really hoping it's 1989. I don't know whether another Iran could come out of Egypt. I really hope not. But however it goes from now, there is something incredible about all those people from different walks of life actually saying: No! we want something better! There is an undeniable power in that. It is really inspiring."
