Jah Wobble is why God made woofers.
Not solely was the clear, full-bodied, three-dimensional throb of his Fender Precision bass the primary sound individuals heard after they dropped the needle on Public Picture Ltd.’s debut single “Public Picture” in 1978, it was additionally the primary sound rising from PiL’s post-punk line-in-the-sand Metallic Field a yr later.
“A few of the heavier tracks on Metallic Field, they’re not likely linear,” observes the person born and nonetheless legally often called John Wardle. “They’re sort of massive slabs of music. Sonically, they’re like expressionist portray, you realize?”
Wobble has a brand new collaborative album with two of his sons and a new-ish album with the ex-Siouxsie & the Banshees guitarist Jon Klein to speak up. However fond 47-year-old reminiscences of Metallic Field have diverted him onto considered one of his pet theories.
“For some cause,” he muses, “fine-art actions at all times come earlier than the musical counterpart. It amazes me nobody else has been in a position to see that post-punk was our model of the summary expressionists of the ’50s. We had been very comparable: hedonists, bourgeois, nihilist, badly behaved, brattish, horrible, narcissistic—all that stuff, you realize?”
Now 68, with an awe-inspiring solo or co-billed catalog of over 60 albums, 30-plus documented appearances on different individuals’s initiatives, a stem-winding autobiography (Darkish Luminosity: Memoirs of a Geezer), and 40 years of uninterrupted sobriety, Wobble not comes off all that hedonistic, bourgeois, nihilistic, badly behaved, brattish, horrible, or narcissistic—fairly the alternative, actually. He and his spouse, the guzheng virtuoso Zilan Liao, have been married since 1997, and their sons John T. (23) and Charlie (21) are making them proud by carrying on an interesting hybrid of their mother and father’ musical traditions because the duo Tian Qiyi. If something, Wobble looks as if a person in full, and an particularly busy man in full at that.
“I simply did a factor with Steve Hillage,” he says, “a gig with some very nice individuals in Hungary. And this weekend I performed with Richard Russell, the man that owns XL [Recordings].” Particularly, Wobble joined Russell’s All the things Is Recorded on the Inexperienced Man Competition to carry out “Lower Off Your Nostril,” the Wobble-rapped punk-meets-“Subterranean Homesick Blues” title reduce of the brand new All the things Is Recorded EP. “I went and carried out that tune yesterday and performed on one other couple of tunes. Each week there’s been one thing totally different.” He’s even made a brief movie with the British actress Maxine Peake. “So it’s been a busy few weeks.”
It’s been a busy few months. In March, he launched his newest Klein collaboration and his first album of 2026, Automated Paradise (Dimple Disc). At simply over half-hour, it finds Wobble inveighing towards our up to date dystopia from a number of angles—ruminative singing (“Fading Away”), ruminative recitations (“Learn Between the Strains”), mad ranting whereas ducking Klein-generated shrapnel (“Make It Cease,” “Who Wins”), less-ruminative recitations (“Infinite Sky”), and extra mad ranting (“Terminal Terminal the Finish). Via all of it throbs the sound that God made woofers for.
“It was achieved in a short time,” Wobble says casually, “simply in some useless time that we had. And there have been drummers about, you realize.”
Yeah, occurs on a regular basis. Two post-punk stalwarts are simply taking a breather when, lo and behold, there’s a drummer! Hey, let’s crank out a couple of bangers concerning the insanity throughout! Whoa, we now have an album!
“It was a extremely good vibe,” says Wobble, “very relaxed and ‘Let’s simply make one thing occur.’ And with Jon you at all times are likely to suppose ‘OK, let’s lean it in direction of post-punk’ as a result of he’s received that guitar model down. And, lyrically, it was like ‘Let’s simply put all of it in there—ecological catastrophe, monetary collapse, the illness of social media, the horror that’s the dependancy to cellphones that we’ve all received. Let’s simply chuck it in there and have a little bit of enjoyable.’”
His definition of “enjoyable” has expanded considerably over the a long time. No sooner had Wobble exited PiL in 1980 than he received in on the bottom ground of what would come to be often called “world music,” finally forming Jah Wobble’s Invaders of the Coronary heart and having fun with Trendy Rock Tracks hits within the ’90s with “Visions of You” (that includes Sinéad O’Connor) and “The Solar Does Rise” (that includes the Cranberries’ Dolores O’Riordan). Actually, a complete survey of the recordings on which Wobble has performed reveals a Zelig-like knack for throbbing his manner into virtually each semi-popular style ever to matter. His assertion that he has “by no means made a pretend file” (“even within the ’80s once we had been making stuff utilizing these cardboard-box-sounding drum machines”) will strike anybody who has hung out along with his discography as understatement writ giant.
And now along with his model new—and second—album of 2026, Wobble’s definition of enjoyable has expanded all the best way to embody John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Earlier than you trot out the stat that there have already been over 500 albums filled with Beatles songs achieved in non-Beatley methods and thereby indicate that the very last thing anyone wants is one other one, be apprised that Wobble and Sons—er Tian Qiyi—have provide you with a sound that’s additional Beatley, no less than if by “Beatley” one means the South Asian shimmer that the Liverpool lads started incorporating when LSD and the Maharishi got here into the image.
On Mystic Liverpool: The Beatles Psychedelic Psongbook (30 Hertz/Cherry Crimson), Wobble and Tian Qiyi take 10 of the Fab 4’s most Japanese-leaning deep cuts and singles (B-sides principally) and reinterpret them with Chinese language percussion and yangqin (performed by John T.), erhu and morin khuur (performed by Charlie), and guzheng (on “Strawberry Fields Without end,” courtesy of Liao). And, in fact, on the coronary heart of every tune throbs the dub-wise bass of the album’s top-billed geezer.
“This file is devoted to my late father-in-law, Mr. Okay.H. Li (Liao Gui Xiong),” Wobble writes within the liner notes. “He was an enormous Beatles fan and…would have been so pleased with his grandsons—and of his daughter in fact.”
Neither Wobble nor John T. is aware of for positive, by the best way, how Mr. Okay.H. Li was in a position to go away mainland China for Hong Kong en path to England within the early Eighties. However John T. does know why his grandfather dug the Beatles.
“He was involved in how they’d get these actually basic, British-sounding orchestrations to slot in with a rock-band or a pop context, and he was even involved in a number of the psychedelic stuff,” he explains. “I believe that’s actually what fascinated him.”
Apparently, it’s a fascination one can inherit, and Wobble shares it. He even has two prior recordings of Beatles’ songs as proof—“Come Collectively” with the reggae singer Horace Andy and (foreshadowing the model on Mystic Liverpool) “Inside You With out You” along with his fellow PiL alumnus Keith Levene. Wobble has recorded with Tian Qiyi earlier than too, first in 2023 on the otherworldly-meets Japanese-worldly Crimson Mist, then once more in 2025 on the even additional on the market Songs for Employees.
Not like these undertakings, nonetheless, Mystic Liverpool was Wobble’s thought. “At first,” says John T., “I believe each me and Charlie had been form of like ‘The Beatles? What are we meant to do with this?’ As a result of it by no means occurred to us how a lot Japanese-sounding stuff they’d achieved. After which once we had been listening, we mentioned, ‘Oh yeah, I keep in mind this. I do not forget that one.’ Then we began considering, ‘This actually is smart. It form of enhances our sound nicely.’
Understatement, together with Beatles fascination, clearly runs within the household. Along with Wobble’s sons’ bringing out the aforementioned South Asian shimmer in songs resembling “Norwegian Wooden,” “Rain,” and “Tomorrow By no means Is aware of,” there’s Charlie’s singing. As half of Mystic Liverpool’s songs had been initially lead sung by John Lennon and the opposite half by George Harrison, it’s applicable that Charlie appears like a now-you-hear-it, now-you-actually-hear it mix of the 2.
“He’s received an excellent voice,” Wobble understates. “He’s received what you name a Mancunian accent, which isn’t 1,000,000 miles away from Scousing in a manner, you realize?”
Scousing, by the way, means “talking with a Liverpool accent.” Additionally by the way, Wobble is at present considered one of solely three recording artists (R. Stevie Moore and Les Fradkin are the others) who’ve recorded two studio variations of “Inside You With out You.” “Sergeant Pepper‘s my favourite Beatles album by a mile,” he says, even when solely considered one of its songs ended up assembly all three standards for inclusion on Mystic Liverpool: Beatles, Japanese, psychedelic.
“It’s ‘Inside You With out You,’” Wobble says. “It’s ‘Tomorrow By no means Is aware of.’ It’s this taking a quite simple factor the place we don’t need to strive too exhausting, the place we will play the Beatles stuff however be ourselves, you realize. And the boys will be themselves. And it’ll work.”
