“Right here, right now ADF are the most important band in Britain.” NME
1997 Rafi’s Revenge originally peaked at number 20 on the UK Albums Chart
and was shortlisted for the 1998 Mercury Music Prize, with Bobby Gillespie
hailing them at the time as ‘the best live act in Britain’. This 21 year
anniversary reissue includes a limited edition, coloured 2×LP plus expanded
digital & CD editions with bonus tracks selected by Adrian Sherwood. To
celebrate the release the band are playing at Rich Mix, London on 28th March.
By the time they recorded Rafi’s Revenge in 1998, Asian Dub Foundation were
primed to explode. Having initially emerged from East London’s grassroots
Community Music project as a largely studio-based collective, the band had
galvanised themselves into a riotously
exciting touring machine by the late Nineties. Their extraordinary live shows
around this period were electrifying to witness, kinetic and dynamic, incendiary
and euphoric, confrontational yet celebratory. For sheer roof-raising energy,
they were unrivalled. ADF have
evolved enormously over the last two decades, of course, but their breakthrough
album remains a fascinating chapter in the real, complex, unwritten history of
Britpop. Expanded and enlarged for this anniversary edition, these multi-layered
musical treasures still dazzle and delight with their grandiose ambition and
riotous energy.
