Adrian Sherwood Returns With “The Collapse of Everything”

His first solo album in 13 years, The Collapse of Everything sees pioneering UK dub producer and On-U Sound label founder Adrian Sherwood pushing out of his comfort zone and moving deeper into cinematic, experimental, and reflective territory. The release coincides with his first-ever solo performances with a live band, beginning at the Dub Sessions 20th Anniversary in Japan and leading to a headline show at London’s Barbican in February 2026.

The Collapse of Everything fuses dub textures, experimental sound design, and melodic exploration, with Sherwood treating effects and ambience as compositional elements equal to melody and rhythm. He balances technological curiosity and old-school craftsmanship by using modern electronic tools alongside vintage outboard gear. Performing with Sherwood at the upcoming live shows will be Doug Wimbish (Living Colour, Sugar Hill Gang, Tackhead), Alex White (Primal Scream, Fat White Family), and Mark Bandola (The Lucy Show). Visuals will also play a major role, with bespoke animated and collage projections by Peter Harris, Katie King, and Mike Hodgson, designed to complement each track. A video for “Dub Inspector” by Harris and King was released over the summer.

Over Zoom, Sherwood discussed the making of the album and what to expect from the upcoming live shows.

This is your first solo album in 13 years. What led you to put out another solo release at this point in time?

Adrian Sherwood: I’ve made collaborations where it’s myself with Sonic Boom and Panda Bear or whoever. I do records with other people, and every record I make, I always think they’re kind of my record, even though it’s not fully my record.

But now I thought… I was doing little live dub shows, getting invited to do DJ events. People want a band, or they want a name that’s really on a front cover. And I thought, Well, sod it, I’m going to have a go and make a project that I’m going to take out almost like a band. And I thought, firstly, I’ve got to make a good sonic, and then also I’m going to try and attempt to do a really good live show with it. And I just thought it would push me out of my safety zone a little bit doing it.

What was the overall timeframe?

Adrian Sherwood: Well, three years from beginning to end.

You have live shows coming up. Were you thinking about live performance as you made the recordings? Did you think about how this material would work?

Adrian Sherwood: No. I mean, what I tend to do is you work on some stuff and just leave it, let it breathe a bit, add a little bit when you’ve got the right people visiting, then you work at a speedier pace to see something over the finishing line. So I’ve always got two or three things I’m working on that are really good but I’m just not quite finished with.

But what I’m always doing—I’m always thinking, well, if I’m going to be invited to do shows or even just big DJ events, I like running it so I can play my own stuff that no one else can play back. A little bit like a Jamaican sound system operator where I’ve got unique versions of stuff. So I’m always cutting tunes thinking, “Oh, when I go out, I’m going to test that out and play it on this one.”

Here, I was more interested in creating a sonic that I was very proud of and thought was relevant for today. That’s what I was trying to do—I wanted to make a really interesting sonic. And obviously it’s all down to the tempos you work at. To do it live, I want a bit more energy. I don’t want it to be all kind of dreary and downtempo.

Did you have a strong concept in mind going into it? And if not, how might it have evolved over the past three years as you put it all together?

Adrian Sherwood: When I did the last record Survival and Resistance—which not a lot of people know, but I’m very proud of—I was using pitched-down things. I was taking something and pitching it to 5% of its original pitch and creating these kinds of noises, then stretching them, tuning them, and bending them to create what sounded like synthesizers.

On this one, I was experimenting with pitching and grooves again. I always think it sounds a bit crap—musicians or producers talking about what they do, you sound a bit of an idiot. But I had an idea to create a sonic that, if other people were listening to it, they’d think, “How was that done? How was that done?” and, “Oh, that’s quite beautiful.”

So I was trying to marry together a lot of the ideas I’ve picked up in these last years. Carrying on from where I left off, and also coming up with something that has a sense of adventure and also mischief and fun in it. I also wanted to make a kind of semi-dystopian thing as well, to reflect what’s going on, but also have elements of joy in it. So I’m using all the tricks I’ve been picking up, and the things that I’ve enjoyed lately, and trying to encompass them in one record.

Particularly on this album, I feel that the sound design and the effects are just as important as the melodic elements. How do these elements come into play during your creative process? Do the melodic elements come out of the sound design and manipulation? Do you have melodies in mind?

Adrian Sherwood: It kind of falls into place. Sometimes I start with basslines—I’ll work on them, humming them. In this case, Doug Wimbish and I were working together. Then melodies came first on some tracks. And then there was the marriage of investigating these tuning things and also using a lot of ghosting—taking my own tracks from years ago, ghosting them with AI, using RipX, creating that kind of really weird little world it develops.

Then playing with the tuning, hearing melodies that aren’t even there—because on good dub records, I think a lot of fans hear melodies that aren’t really there. It’s kind of quite mystical, in my opinion. So when I was experimenting with this, it sounds like I’m some bloody laboratory bloke or something, but I was just adventuring to try and find a sonic. And in the process, you hear little melodies and colors, and I hear all sound as a big picture. I just played into that and invited musicians to interpret those melodies and things. And Bob’s your uncle, as we say in England—you’ve got it.

You mentioned using the AI tools. How has the evolution of technology affected your workflow and process over the years?

Adrian Sherwood: Well, there’s always something great coming along. In recent years there have been so many absolutely amazing plugins available. So many things where I’ll hear it and say, “Wow, that is great.” Or we’ll get a whole bank of them—sometimes we’re given them, sometimes we buy them—and I’m like, “Wow, there are some incredible things here.”

I think it’s a bit like that with records. There are so many good records made that people don’t even know exist—so many good recordings that have slipped by. There are so many great inventions, sonically, sound tools, that I have my favorites and I pick certain sounds that we use in the box. Then I marry them with things that I’ve had—some of which for 40-plus years—my favorite analog outboard bits of gear.

I particularly enjoy taking things, driving them in overload buses, then EQ-ing them with the Great American Cinema Engineering or Langevin EQs, and then editing them and creating little sonics that marry some of those great new plugin things with the vintage gear I like as well.

I’m spoiled. I’m very spoiled—I’ve got to say, I’m very spoiled for that.

Since you obviously have been keeping up with the tools, thinking back to earlier in your career when things were more limited, did working within those confines shape your approach in ways that might stick with you today?

Adrian Sherwood: Well, very much so. I think when I started, I was very much just stuck in the reggae world. I started meeting people like Mark Stewart, who opened my head up and introduced me to Brion Gysin and William Burroughs, all the schools of sound—the French experimentalists, the German ones—discovering people like Conny Plank, and all the people who were… anti-production people like Mark E. Smith from The Fall and Blixa from Neubauten, who didn’t want any effects, just really extreme EQs to cut your head off.

You learn all the time. And I’ve been very lucky to have rubbed shoulders with and worked with a lot of great people. I picked up some tricks from way back. But I’m also not stupid enough to think you just rest on your laurels. You always need some youngsters to come along. And even if you think initially you’ve heard it before, when you start realizing what angle on something from the past younger producers and musicians are latching onto, it’s not quite what you thought it was, necessarily. So I try to embrace new things and new ideas, with groove and sonics, and keep introducing young folk along as well.

Was there any overlap between this album and other work you were doing? Did anything perhaps start out as a collaboration with somebody else and end up on this album?

Adrian Sherwood: Well, yeah. The saxophonist and the guitarist I’ve been working with in this last period—we started working, I think, on Sonic Boom and Panda Bear’s album I did for them called Resetting Dub. It’s a fantastic piece of work. So some of the seeds were sown musically on that.

I did a record for an American band, Spoon, and that was a challenge because the leader of the band is so firm in what he wants and he’s so melodic. Britt was pushing me to do things—which is good for you, because it’s something I would never have done normally. I ended up going to do what started as a couple of remixes, and it turned into a whole album of collaboration together.

But those things pushed me more into the melodic area, and I’m a bit like… not a proper musician. I like the noise factor more than the melody. But working with Britt and also the Sonic Boom / Panda Bear lads got me more aware that I needed to get some nice melody vibes of my own with my own sonic. And I was determined I wasn’t going to use any vocals on this one—or just very minimal bits of vocals—and make it quite almost bleak and beautiful. That was the idea I had, with a bit of humor in there as well, with spaghetti western touches and things like that.

You’re debuting this live show at the Dub Sessions 20th Anniversary in Japan. Was that the obvious place to debut it?

Adrian Sherwood: Well, Japan—the production there is second to none. Every time we go there, we’ve got our crew there from all these years. I know the people who own the PA company, all the crew that we work with. So I’m taking our lads over there. Doug is flying from the States, and we’re all flying from England. I’m bringing my own engineer as well. We’ve got our own new visuals that we’re testing out for the first time.

Japan’s a great place to start it, because everyone will be excited. A couple of the guys have never been there before, and we’ve got a very good fan base there, so we’ll be relaxed. And then once we’ve done these shows, we’re going to do a very big one in London in February at the Barbican. I’m just trying to see how it works. If it comes off, I think it’ll be very exciting. It’d be something I could do anywhere.

How is preparation going? What can we expect from the show?

Adrian Sherwood: Well, I’m basically reproducing a few tracks off the album. I’m going to be on stage with a mixing desk, and I’ll be controlling the drums, the percussion, certain bits of the music. I’ll have with me a pad where I’ve got live samples on it. I’ll have at least three reverbs, three delay units, and a noise machine.

And then next to me I’ll have the great Doug Wimbish, Mark Bandola, and Alex White on sax and flutes. And we’ll be making a cacophony of dub noise with these fantastic new visuals behind us. So I hope people get off on it. It’s kind of very tripped out. And yeah, I want it to just leap out of the speakers at the audience.

What can you tell us about the visuals?

Adrian Sherwood: The visuals are ones we’ve been evolving. My artist friend Peter Harris has done lots of it with his friend [Katie King] —a lot of it’s animation. We just did a new video called “Dub Inspector.” That’s them. So we’re not working with budgets like Michael Jackson or something, but we’re making stuff.

We’ve got lots of collage visuals too, with my friend Mike Hodgson from Pitch Black in New Zealand. He’s going to come with us as well. He’s going to meet us in Japan and he’ll be running the visuals. So we’ve got visuals corresponding to each piece of music that we’re doing in the set.

After the show in Japan, there’s a big one in England. Are you planning on taking it on the road?

Adrian Sherwood: I’m coming to the States in March. I’m hoping to do nine or ten shows, but I can’t on this occasion, unfortunately, afford to bring the full band. So what I’m going to be doing is having the whole mixing desk on stage, my engineer front of house running the visuals and making sure everything sounds loud enough. And then I’m going to be doing a full-on live dub show, creating a studio on stage with all these new visuals as well—and coming to the States for the first time in a long time.

Is there anything else you’d like to add? Any other projects coming up?

Adrian Sherwood: It’s two years since I put out a new release on the label, so I’m paving the way for the Collapse of Everything at the moment. And I think in the last ten years, I’m very proud of all the albums we’ve put out, and I think On-U is in pretty good shape.

I’m also doing another collaborative album at the moment with Nightmares on Wax, which will be coming out next March for the 20th anniversary of the album. That’s virtually finished—it’s sounding great as well. But right now, my brain’s on… well, like I said, trying to take myself out of my comfort zone a bit, go on stage at the front, and just see what we come up with.

It could be absolutely great fun. And as budget permits, I’ll add one or two more musicians and make it more and more eccentric, fun, and challenging—all those things.

For more info, visit adriansherwood.com.

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