DJ POOLHOUSE IS JAH KK FRÖSZT, AND THIS IS ICE REGGAE ONE
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION: Ice Reggae is not just a genre—it’s a way of life. Revealed to DJ POOLHOUSE (known here by his Icestafari name, Jah KK Frözst) one cold northern night at the bottom of a frozen gravity bong, through divine intervention by Jah the Most Chill, ICE REGGAE ONE is a continuous deejay mixtape that blends dub, dancehall, Eurodance, white rasta punk, 2-Tone, drum & bass, and '90s club cultures into a sound both icy and warm, white and Black, Arctic and tropical.
It’s frozen disco dub meets sunlit trip hop and bass-heavy indie dance. Frosted steel drums. Sweaty melodica riffs. Pop house soaked in echo. Ice Reggae is the sun on a snow-covered beach—a Revelation of the soulsonic force and the next chapter in the Plan of the Mega Jam.
Rooted in dub’s versioning tradition, Ice Reggae toasts, remixes, and reinvents itself with every frozen pulse, ICE REGGAE ONE is an icy hot arcto-tropical transmission, blessed by the Borean breath of Jah the Most Chill.
[Backklash Communications, 2025.]
PRESS RELEASE:
Hi! Thanks for listening to my inaugural ICE REGGAE set! This was truly inspired by a vision one night last winter, after my gravity bong froze over inside my in-laws’ garage. I was touched by the Borean Breath of Jah the Most Chill, and given an Icestafari name: JAH "KK" FRÖSZT, Prince of Ice Reggae.
ICE REGGAE ONE is ultimately my way of expressing joyous gratitude to our Creator and sharing the blessed revelation of Ice Reggae with anyone willing to receive it—through these delightful dub plates, expertly selected and mixed with the love and care of a painter or a nuclear scientist.
Musically, dub culture and Jamaican music are the foundation of my vision. I enjoy tracing the recursive influence of dub techniques through popular music and celebrating this aspect of the Afro-Euro musical language, which has enriched countless lives and cultures around the world. Ice Reggae is not merely a celebration of “white meets Black,” but a restoration of the Hyperborean spirit that is sparked when men come together and reshape the culture through creative partnership.
As an artist, I view Ice Reggae as a highly refined creative thoughtform for the culture to consume. It is a retroactively constructed musical genre, a fashion style, an attitude, a gnostic faith. Ice Reggae is conceptually built on music, history, mysticism, syncretic creativity, and a future-forward embrace of tradition: the Jamaican music tradition, the pop and club traditions, the tradition of the obscure priests of Dub science and the apocryphal texts of the electrical wizards and gadgeteers of the radio age, and the companion tradition of the brotherhood of Anglo and American fanboys who revered and preserved the glory of dub’s beauty.
This brings me to another inspiration for this mix: '90s compilation CD culture, which brought the millennial generation under the spellbinding influence of dub. Specifically, the treasured Soul Jazz Records (where my fellow 300% Dynamite! uncs at??) that collected rare Jamaican classics.
2 Many DJ’s seminal “As Heard on Radio Soulwax Vol. 2” is the ultimate touchstone for all of my mixes; I could only dream of ever capturing a sliver of their mixtape magic. Finally, the third source of inspiration in this late 90s/Y2K electronica triumvirate is this sick series of downtempo comps called The Chill Out Album (specifically volumes 1 & 2) from Telstar TV, who I feel are sort of like the pop-archivists at Rhino Records but for the UK. The 90s were the golden age of the (very very expensive) imported genre compilation disk and the learned geeks & archivist, who were its champions.
The treasure trove of esoteric and leftfield downtempo gems found on Chill Out Album Vol. 1 first sparked my love for dub and electronica in the '90s. I picked up a copy of the slim blue double-disc CD (with the deep blue lava lamp cover art) at the Virgin Megastore in Union Square on a visit to downtown San Francisco. This was when I was probably a freshman in high school. It blew my mind. I didn’t do drugs as a teen, so hard techno and pure underground dance music revered by my raver peers didn’t interest me back then. Too raw, underground.
Chill Out Album revealed a colorful, mysterious world of dub, trip hop, glossy electronica and obscure ancient funk and exotica. That Saint Etienne record changed my life. Suddenly it was like, wtf I love electronic music and Neil Young now! It was at least a decade old when I discovered it, but its magnificent allure and spacey dubwise house still entices new listeners to this day.
Just hearing those breezy synth riffs as it plays back on my monitor, I can practically smell the hot wet dance floor at one of my old haunts, Popscene, where this record would delight the crowd at 330 Ritch in SOMA, where pop geeks with skinny ties and pencil skirts and other assorted dub-inflected mod larpers gathered to simulate 1989 Manchester once a week.
But now I’m starting to geezer out, so I’ll wrap this press release up before I start bitching about how that Virgin Megastore is now just another empty big-box husk downtown!
–DJ POOLHOUSE, JUNE 2025
ICE REGGAE ONE | TRACKLIST:
1 - Lee "Scratch" Perry Secret Laboratory (Scientific Dancehall) - 2 - Beats International Dub Be Good to Me (Smith & Mighty Remix) - 3 - A Tribe Called Quest I Left My Wallet in El Segundo (Vampire Mix) - 4 - Ace of Base The Sign (Dub Mix) - 5 - St. Etienne Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Andrew Weatherall Mix) - 6 - Snow Informer (Drum Mix) - 7 - Nelly Furtado Turn Off the Lights (Timbaland Mix / Reggae Mix) - 8 - Nostalgia 77 feat. Alice Russell 7 Nation Army - 9 - J. Period feat. Buju Banton & General Steele Killing a Soundboy - 10 - The English Beat / Rankin Roger Mirror in the Bathroom (Dub version) -11- Banana Man Dance Hall Murder -12 - Sneaker Pimps 6 Underground (2 Lone Swordsmen Mix) - 13 - Dr. Octagon Blue Flowers (DJ Hype Mix) Dubplate Version - 14 - Roni Size/Reprazent Railing -15 - DJ Aphrodite My Dub Is Your Dub / Whitney Houston Dubplate - 16 - Technimatic feat. Zara Kershaw Parallel (LSB Mix) -17 - Cornell Campbell Just My Imagination - 18 - Junior Murvin Police + Thieves (Grumbling Dub)
DJ POOLHOUSE: KLUB KLASSIXX - EXCLUSIVE DEEJAY MIXES FROM BACKKLASH
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