Adrian Sherwood

Adrian Sherwood is an artist. Whether it’s on his own thrillingly unique solo records; as a band member of groups such as Tackhead; or as the creative force behind the long-running and highly collectable On-U Sound label.

He has long been beloved of those “in the know”, with traces of his incredible and hugely varied body of work rippling ever outward. Perhaps more commonly credited as a producer, he is nevertheless one who has pushed the limit of what that word means from the get-go, just as he has crossed genre lines and mutated different forms of music into original new combinations. It’s not too much of an exaggeration to say that he’s been a kind of ‘invisible band member’ for many of the groups that he’s produced: dreaming up concepts, arranging instruments, coming up with band names, humming bass lines, turning songs inside out. A hands on, endlessly creative maverick operator, Sherwood is a long way from the traditional image of the studio impresario sat in a swivel chair whilst the musicians go through take after take. Instead he is right in there, directing every aspect, from picking the players to turning the mixdown into an artform in itself. He is to the mixing desk what Jimi Hendrix is to the guitar, or J Dilla is to the sampler.

This is no more evident than on his own series of carefully crafted solo records. They may not come along very often, but when they do they are more than worth the wait. His first album Never Trust A Hippy? was snapped up by Peter Gabriel’s Real World label, gathering together a diverse array of talent to make the tracks, including crack Jamaican rhythm section Sly & Robbie, Shara Nelson of Massive Attack and Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali (nephew of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan). Becoming A Cliché featured a different but no less compelling cast, including reggae heavyweights Lee “Scratch” Perry, Dennis Bovell, Little Roy and Bim Sherman, and cemented his popularity in Japan with the chart hit, ‘Animal Magic’. Survival & Resistance was more of a concept album, built around tuned percussion. In between this trilogy we were served supplemental work, such as the Recovery Time mini-album, and an entire re-work of his second album, re-titled Dub Cliché,

This all takes us to the present moment, Adrian Sherwood’s fourth and most ambitious album to date: The Collapse Of Everything. And for the first time ever, Adrian will be taking to the stage and touring with his own live band. The new show will premier this autumn at the 'Dub Sessions 20th Anniversary’ in Japan, with a group that includes long-time collaborator Doug Wimbish (Living Color, The Sugar Hill Gang, Tackhead), Alex White (Primal Scream, Fat White Family) and Mark Bandola (The Lucy Show). Their UK debut will be a major London show in February 2026, to be announced soon. Sherwood will also be touring in North America, Australia and Europe in 2026.

Adrian Sherwood’s output in the last few years has been extraordinary; two heavily experimental collaborations with Bristol dubstep don Pinch; his studio albums with Lee “Scratch” Perry - Rainford and it’s tripped out dub companion Heavy Rain, were seen as a thrilling return to form for Lee, and both albums found themselves in the top slots on the Billboard Reggae chart. In 2022, Adrian continued in this vein with a pair of Horace Andy albums, Midnight Rocker and Midnight Scorchers. Midnight Rocker was crowned Guardian’s #1 Global album and Mojo’s fourth best album of that year. He followed these with triumphant new records by two groups he helped bring together - African Head Charge (A Trip To Bolgatanga) and Creation Rebel (Hostile Environment). His long history of being invited to re-work other artist’s entire albums (going back to Echo Dek by Primal Scream in the 90s) has been recently augmented by him providing the same service to Panda Bear & Sonic Boom (Reset In Dub) and Spoon (Lucifer On The Moon). On the live front he presented a fully immersive 360 audio experience in London in 2023, utilising a hand-crafted 3D sound system, with plans to expand this in future.

For more than four decades, Adrian Sherwood has consistently been breaking new ground with his experiments in dub, punk, post-punk, bass music, and beyond. As a producer and remixer working with everyone from Nine Inch Nails to The Slits to Depeche Mode to The Fall to Blur to Sinead O’Connor, and more recently the chart-topping US artist, Halsey. Long regarded as one of the most innovative and influential artists in contemporary music via his talent for creating musical space, suspense, sensations and textures. This has enabled him to pioneer a distinctive fusion of dub, rock, reggae and dance that challenges tradition not only in roots circles, but also in the pop world at large.

Sherwood himself comments: “Someone once described me as just a fan who’d got his hands on a mixing desk. They were probably trying to be nasty, but I took it as a compliment – that’s exactly what I am! I’d rather try and create a niche amongst like-minded people, and create our own little market place, be that 5, 50 or 500,000 sales and also be true to our principles of making things, and to your own spirit that you put into the work. Music is lovely because it stimulates people, superficial music doesn’t. If you make something that you put your heart and soul into and really try to push it so it leaps out the speakers at you, and if there’s a good feel to it, then you’ve achieved something.”