When I think of records that came out of nowhere as a complete bolt for the blue, any number of iconoclastic tiles spring to mind; records like Model 500's NIght Drive, 4 Hero's Combat Dancin', Tricky's Aftermath, and so on and so on. Yet if there's one (largely unsung) record that belongs in the same league as those future-preempting classics, then it's this bad slab of wax from Colourbox.
Lodged in between the burnout end of post punk and the dawn of Britain's post-hip hop blues in the shape of Soul II Soul, Neneh Cherry, Bomb The Bass, The Wild Bunch and Smith & Mighty (the sound that would come to be called trip hop), this 12" seems to presage Bristol's sound of the nineties in its dub-wise, post-disco grooves.
Colourbox
On the face of it, Colourbox were an unlikely proposition: brothers Martin and Steven Young set out in 1982 with a dark, claustrophobic sound reminiscent of the less skronky side of Rip Rig & Panic (just as that crew were winding down with their Attitude LP, in fact). The new pop sounds of ABC and The Human League had swooped in to become the sound of the moment, and the glitz and glamour of MTV and Nick Rhodes were in full swing. Shiny was in, darkness was out, and many of the latter day post punk bands suddenly seemed to be out of step with the zeitgeist. Even in Simon Reynold's epic Rip It Up And Start Again, many of groups of this era merit only footnote status...
And yet... and yet, this Indian Summer of post punk features considerable treasures hidden in its shadows. Much like the contemporary output of Compass Point Studios, these records as often as not served to provide a metaphorical link between Metal Box and Newbuild, that is the post punk past and the electronic future.
400 BlowsDeclaration Of IntentIlluminated
I'm talking about records like 23 Skidoo's The Gospel Comes To New Guinea, 400 Blows' Declaration Of Intent, Mark Stewart's Learning To Cope With Cowardice, Fats Comet's Don't Forget That Beat, Section 23's From The Hip, but above all Colourbox's Baby I Love You So - the March 2018 record of the month and a dubbed-out post-disco, proto-trip hop 12" masterpiece.
Cloaked in evocative crimson artwork (provided by 23 Envelope) that springs from the clearly-defined 4AD design aesthetic, it nevertheless maintains a rude, street-level edge that seems to whisper nineties. From the sleeve on downward, this record screams trip hop so clearly that if it were strewn out alongside Maxinquaye, Dummy and Blue Lines one might assume they were all from the moment. After putting the record on the turntable and starting it a spinning, you quickly find out that the sonics are just as forward-thinking.
Jacob MillerBaby I Love You SoYard
The record's a-side is a Baby I Love You So, a cover version of Jacob Miller's epochal reggae classic, famously produced by Augustus Pablo (who in turn dubbed it out into King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown, easily one of the top five dub traxx of all time). On the face of it, one might think it folly to attempt to version one of the great front-to-back 7" singles on wax, but from the opening bars it quickly becomes clear that you're dealing with something special.
With metallic percussion along the lines of Adrian Sherwood's On-U Sound productions, the beat tumbles forward at a downbeat pace as the bassline throbs with metronomic precision. Then, a searing guitar figure cuts through the track like a knife, following Augustus Pablo's melodica line from the Jacob Miller original note for note. Lorita Grahame bluesy vocals anchor the track in the soil, while her cooing backup vocals seem to drift gently toward the clouds.
Grahame's whole approach is actually the linchpin here, betraying the track's entire m.o.: this is lover's rock rendered as a torch song (sound familiar?). The whole thing simply had the misfortune of coming out about a decade before it's time... in 1995 this record would have fit right in. 1986? Forget about it! It couldn't have been more anachronistic if it featured a Neptunes remix...
Mark Stewart + MaffiaMark StewartMute
Like Mark Stewart's self-titled 1987 LP, the hard edges of this record's digidub percussion and spectral atmosphere seem to outline what would become the roots-n-future mash up of the Bristol sound. With the Burt Bacharach covers of Smith & Mighty and The Wild Bunch and Massive Attack's moody cover of Chaka Khan's Any Love waiting in the wings, the whole thing comes on like an unlikely blueprint for the Bristol blues. Augmenting the record's almost cyberpunk-by-default tone are film samples from John Carpenter's Escape From New York sprinkled liberally throughout the track. If it all sounds too good to be true, then yeah... we're on the same page.
Of course, the b-side's even better. Looks Like We're Shy One Horse/Shootout makes literal the connection between Augustus Pablo's man-from-the-East melodica stylings and Ennio Morricone's spaghetti western OSTs with what amounts to a dubbed-out discomix cover of the theme to One Upon A Time In The West (with samples from the film - along with Duck, You Sucker - once again sprinkled liberally throughout).
You brought two too many...
That same searing guitar is back, this time sawing out the theme's refrain as whistling synths soar through the ether, horns punching in ever so often. Picture the midpoint between Joe Gibbs & The Professionals' African Dub All-Mighty records and Bandulu's Antimatters/Cornerstone/Redemption trilogy and you wouldn't be too far off. Once again, simply stunning.
At about five minutes in, the groove cuts out and you're left with droning atmosphere for a spell before the whistling synths return - this time pitched down a couple octaves - in such a way that wouldn't sound out of place scoring Ridley Scott's Black Rain. This is billed as the Shootout portion of the track. Then, a downbeat-the-dub-ruler beat kicks in and Repo Man-esque choirs fill the sky, as the track creeps toward its denouement with clockwork inevitability. This is Deckard in a trench coat, staggering through rain-soaked streets music. Cyberpunk, once again, on both sides.1
I can't imagine what it must have been like, hearing this back when it first came out...
The gang who metamorphosed into a group,1 purveyors of dubbed-out techno come creeping out the caves, mystics in the firelight like Altered States. Deep space b-boys on the Black Ark tip.
Percussion rolling through High Rise Heaven dub sway in the rainstorm, clouds creep like blanket cross the sky and a Presence hangs in the air. Carl Craig's Innerzone Mix of Better Nation like deep space dancehall coming through the radio, electronics in the sand the Black Ark looms large in the rear-view mirror. Selah's dub hollowed out and scraping shards of metal as the microphone switches on, New Foundation the diamond-perfect fusion of dub and techno, raw rough edges at every corner and the street-level underbelly of Basic Channel's kosmische symphonies.
Were they The Clash?, I heard a voice wonder and deep down felt what they were saying. Original ScientistInfonetBisness, seen. Thunderground and the Illegal Rush coursing through feet planted on concrete running like wires into structures and out into the world below. Graffiti say Fight The Apressers, turn Chapter 6 descend the staircase where Redemption Dub plays and two 7" tiles take flight, Jahquarius and Detention swirl slowly into the sky.
Sons Of The Subway and Space DJz sidewalking on the electro tip, hip hop beats, New York What Is Funky? All of these sounds make sense of the city, life in the Heights, the place where we dwell. Palm Grove against the moonlight, bass pressure knock you in the chest and decks tapped into the power grid. Now you're cooking with dynamite.
And so we cross the threshold Into The 90's, where the aftershocks of dubbed out post punk were continuing to live large. This was the context through which I linked up with the music in the first place, working my way back from the nascent sounds of trip hop's bricolage and the heavy atmospheric techno seeping in from all corners of the globe. In what must be a rather atypical entry into the music, I'd initially become aware of various post punk figures by way of their dalliance with nineties dance and accordingly began exploring their own music in earnest.
Mark Stewart + MaffiaThis Is Stranger Than LoveMute
Right off the bat, Mark Stewart was the strange attractor of the Bristol scene, rubbing shoulders with the trip hop trinity of The Wild Bunch/Massive Attack crew, giving Tricky the impetus to strike out solo (with the epochal Aftermath, which Stewart co-produced) and Smith & Mighty, who turned in their first remix for Stewart's Stranger Than Love. That's quite clearly a profound influence on the Bristol blues and accordingly sent me both back in time, to Stewart's 1987 self-titled LP, and latterly to his 90s records Metatron and Control Data which were of a piece with contemporary outfits like Meat Beat Manifesto and Renegade Soundwave.
Meat Beat ManifestoHelter Skelter/Radio BabylonPlay It Again Sam
Meat Beat Manifesto split the difference between post-industrial noise and post-Bomb Squad hard-edged hip hop, shot through with a healthy dose of dub's bottom end, the combination of which found Jack Dangers' crew essentially creating the template for the big beat of The Chemical Brothers. They're actually poised right at the edge of this chapter and the next (which will trace the contours of hip hop beats as the decade turns), so they will be covered further next time out, but it's important to note the bass-heavy vibes of Radio Babylon within the context of dub and related capers taking center stage today.
Renegade SoundwaveSoundclashMute
Similarly, Renegade Soundwave slotted in quite naturally to the post punk drift, where they rode that third rail between dub, hip hop and a skeletal, stripped-down take on cut-and-paste indie dance. After taking Britain's dancefloors by storm with rude 12"s like The Phantom and Ozone Breakdown, largely defining the interzone between electro's rhythm matrix and big beat's rolling breaks. RSW's debut album, Soundclash, rocked the dancehall with heavy beats and dub's bottom end backing Gary Asquith's wise guy microphone antics, while In Dub largely eschewed vocals altogether in favor of atmosphere. A couple years later, Leftfield remixed the crew's eponymous Renegade Soundwave 12" into a 4/4 slab of stomping tronik house magic.
LeftfieldRhythm And StealthHard Hands
Leftfield themselves offered another conduit back into post punk with John Lydon's vocal spot on Open Up, which sent me back to Metal Box and sideways to Lydon's contemporary solo bid Psycho's Path (which happened to feature remixes from Leftfield and The Chemical Brothers). Leftfield's two 90s LPs each held their own moments of dubbed out magic: Leftism boasted a cinematic, widescreen sound that touched down with shimmering techno, pounding house missives and occasionally ducked into trip hop, while Rhythm And Stealth stripped it all back to hard-edged electroid grooves and smoked-out isolationism. The latter especially works remarkably well alongside the likes of Bandulu (on one hand) and 23 Skidoo (on the other).
23 Skidoo23 SkidooVirgin
23 Skidoo took an interesting turn themselves in the 90s, opening up their Ronin imprint and putting out UK rap records by Roots Manuva, Deckwrecka and Rodney P. even as they amassed a huge back catalog of unreleased material (which was eventually collected on the deluxe edition of the Just Like Everybody compilation). The group's self-titled LP released at the turn of the century was a mini-paradise of rolling breakbeats and moody downbeat that seemed to square the circle between their brand of atmospheric post punk and trip hop.
ColourboxBaby I Love You So4AD
And yet if there was one group that seemed to hallucinate trip hop years before it seeped out of Bristol, it was Colourbox, whose Baby I Love You So took Jacob Miller's lovers rock staple and twisted it into a steely-edged, Escape From New York-sampling dread torch song that came on like something from Tricky 's Pre-Millenium Tension. However, the flipside was another matter altogether, with Morricone's spaghetti western vibes writ large on Looks Like We're Shy One Horse/Shoot Out's discomix showcase which glided on a motorik 4/4 pulse before collapsing into a downbeat-the-dub-ruler conclusion.
The Future Sound Of LondonBBC Radio 1 Essential Mix 2Pod Transmissions
Incidentally, I discovered a lot of this music through The Future Sound Of London's Radio 1 Essential Mix 2 (from 6/3/95), which seemed to source ISDN's weird, twisted trip hop in the dread post punk of 400 Blows, Fats Comet, 23 Skidoo, Cabaret Voltaire and A Certain Ratio. That mix really opened up a whole world of music beyond what I'd previously been exposed to, even betraying the first rumblings of the duo's fascination with sixties psychedelia. Their Dead Cities swan-song - along with its surrounding singles - was also very much of a piece with this post punk terrain as well, continuing where the likes of 23 Skidoo and Cabaret Voltaire left off.
Andrew Weatherall presents Various Artists Nine O'Clock DropNuphonic
On a similar note, Andrew Weatherall offered up another crucial incursion a couple years later with his Nine O'Clock Drop compilation, which happened to overlap with FSOL's Essential Mix in spirit, with the added bonus of the aforementioned Colourbox b-side. That compilation managed to beat the post punk gold rush to the punch by a few years, enshrining a whole brace of great late-period avant funk shearing into electro in one essential package (for the uninitiated, at least). Weatherall's own music always had a bit of post punk flavor just beneath the surface, especially on The Sabres Of Paradise's Haunted Dancehall and much of Two Lone Swordsmen's output. With the Swordsmen ultimately morphing into a full-fledged post punk band with 2004's From The Double Gone Chapel, well, it certainly stacks up.
BanduluCornerstoneBlanco Y Negro
Another group that made a similar transition into full-fledged song forms was Bandulu, who started out dealing in tough, cinematic techno missives before gradually stripping layer after layer away to reveal a skeletal, metallic, dubbed out blueprint of street-level techno before ultimately winding up with their masterstroke Redemption (which featured honest-to-goodness reggae cuts like Detention and Jahquarius). There was also that whole side of the group's output that delved into downbeat electro-dub like Deep Sea Angler, Agent Jah and Chapter 6, very much of a piece with contemporary digidub. Chapter 6 in particular finds the group shearing insouciantly into proto-dubstep territory.
Basic ChannelLyot RmxBasic Channel
Many miles away Basic Channel synthesized an elegant, spacious systems music that was something like the kosmische flipside to Bandulu's tuff minimal techno. Basic Channel's run of 12"s seemed to seep into dance music's consciousness quite gradually as the nineties progressed, before ultimately reshaping whole swathes of the scene in its image by the time the decade was over. Like The Velvet Underground, they almost seemed to make more sense in the following decades than they ever did in their own time. The duo even delved into straight-up dub with their Rhythm & Sound records, which - similar to Bandulu's contemporary evolution - found the duo dealing in spacious, stripped-to-the-bones reggae that came on like Kraftwerk gone dub.
Various Artists Dub Out West Volume 1: Roots CultivatasNubian
Now, if there's one thread to connect all of this firmly back into the 80s then it is surely digidub, that faithful post-dancehall music that was trip hop's shadowy fellow traveler throughout the decade. Smith & Mighty even put out Henry & Louis' Rudiments on their own More Rockers imprint, while their Steppers Delight EP (from 1992) seemed heavily influenced by digidub in its twisted proto-jungle shapes. The Dubhead and Dub Out West series of compilations chronicled first rate digidub springing from this nexus, with Smith & Mighty even turning in some digidub sides under the Blue & Red banner (which ultimately culminated in the Time Will Tell collaboration with Henry & Louis).
Pato BantonMad Professor Captures Pato BantonAriwa
Coming in from the arena of real-deal reggae, the Mad Professor's Ariwa setup was a steady hand on the scene, running from the eighties firmly into the nineties, releasing atmospheric records like Aisha's High Priestess, Mad Professor Captures Pato Banton and the almost ambient-reggae of Bim Sherman's Miracle. Famously, the Mad Professor even reworked Massive Attack's Protection LP into the No Protection set, which was claimed to have surpassed the original in some quarters.
Primal ScreamEcho DekCreation
Similarly, Adrian Sherwood reworked Primal Scream's Vanishing Point into the excellent Echo Dek after cutting a parallel path through the same period. Sherwood's On-U Sound outfit put out records - significantly harder-edged - like the aforementioned Mark Stewart material, along with Tackhead's own output and left field dub experiments like African Head Charge and Creation Rebel. Like Ariwa, On-U Sound seems to offer a seemingly bottomless well of first rate dub (of which, if I'm honest, I remain woefully under-educated on!).
The OrbBlue RoomMercury
And then there's Jah Wobble, whose looming presence throughout the nineties found him appearing on scores of key recordings as the decade progressed. The man was everywhere! Dropping the throbbing bassline for The Orb's Blue Room and Primal Scream's Higher Than The Sun A Dub Symphony In Two Parts, collaborating with Brian Eno on the Spinner LP and taking part in various trip hop excursions with the likes of Bomb The Bass, Ramshackle and Shara Nelson, you couldn't turn around without hearing his full-bodied basslines pulsing from the speakers. Throughout the decade, his own records with the Invaders Of The Heart were excellent excursions into post-fourth world soundscapes, often featuring techno figures like Andrew Weatherall behind the boards (as on the awesome Bomba).
MaterialHallucination EngineAxiom
Similarly, Bill Laswell's Material project returned after a five year hiatus with 1989's Seven Souls, a record whose own fourth world shapes seemed to ring in the decade with spoken word narration provided by William Burroughs. The record was effectively reworked ten years later on The Road To The Western Lands, which featured trip hop figures like Tim Simenon, Talvin Singh and DJ Soul Slinger. Hallucination Engine refined this formula and featured the awesome Mantra, which was reworked by The Orb and later kicked off their Auntie Aubrey's Excursions Beyond The Call Of Duty collection of remixes for other artists.
The Orb Remix ProjectAuntie Aubrey's Excursions Beyond The Call Of DutyUltra
This compilation was yet another key gateway into post punk back in the day, featuring reworks of songs by Killing Joke and Wire alongside the Material entry. Also noteworthy is the presence of frequent Orb collaborator Thomas Fehlmann and Basic Channel's Moritz von Oswald in the German post punk group Palais Schaumburg.
One thing that makes The Orb fascinating is how they happen to spring from this post punk diaspora only to make a splash in the Second Summer Of Love with records like Little Fluffy Clouds and A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld (see also The KLF). You can just feel the implied presence of post punk in the surfaces of their music and in the pulsing dub engine within. Check out this fascinating interview1 with The Orb's Dr. Alex Paterson where he gives something of a musical history of a life lived within music.
Bill LaswellDub Chamber 3ROIR
Consequently, Bill Laswell ended the decade with the awesome Dub Chamber 3 and Material's Intonarumori, a deeply warped hip hop record in the spirit of the Gettovetts and Death Comet Crew, which leads snugly into the next week's episode. To be continued...
LISTEN NOW
TV006: Imperial Slates
Pato BantonMy OpinionAriwa
ColourboxLorita GrahameBaby I Love You So 12" Version4AD
Blue & RedAmid The EtherShiver
Renegade SoundwaveBlack Eye BoyMute
The Sabres Of ParadiseYsaebudSpecial Emissions
MaterialMantraAxiom
Massive AttackHorace AndySpying GlassWild Bunch
Jah Wobble's Invaders Of The HeartBomba Nonsonicus Maximus MixBoy's Own
The Future Sound Of LondonHot KnivesVirgin
Meat Beat ManifestoRadio BabylonPlay It Again Sam
Mark Stewart + MaffiaHigh Ideals And Crazy DreamsOn-U Sound
Primal ScreamWise BloodCreation
Red SnapperThomas The FibWarp
23 SkidooMeltdownRonin
Henry & LouisBeulah Unforsaken LandNubian
ColourboxLooks Like We're Shy One Horse/Shoot Out4AD
MaterialThe Western Lands A Dangerous Road MixTriloka
...and on and on and on. And so we've reached the halfway point in the Terminal Vibration saga, concluding the core eighties segment of the trip. The second half will trace these many pathways into the nineties and beyond, through electronic music, hip hop and finally through the machine soul of Timbaland, The Neptunes and SA-RA right up to the present day. It all leads back to the question I (off-handedly) laid out two years ago: Where does machine funk intersect with post punk? The story of which can start nowhere but the eighties.
Duran DuranDuran DuranEMI
Usually when discussing the eighties, one will descend immediately on what might be termed new romantic music: dawn-of-MTV groups in eyeliner, synths front and center, the second British invasion. I remember this all being a punchline all through the grungey nineties - even as I still carried a torch for the music, tee hee (I've no shame!) - it was supposedly anathema to the era. Never mind that beneath the surface image of the decade lodged in the public imagination there was a whole other eighties, the eighties of My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, Metal Box, Critical Beatdown and Ammnesia, traces of whose DNA ran through the very fabric of nineties music. No! All of that was old music.
Brian Eno/David ByrneMy Life In The Bush Of GhostsSire
Of course now we all know how this ends, with the 21st century, the post punk revival and suddenly the eighties were cool again. And yet I think the caricature that was erected as a result missed large swathes of what the era was all about. Only natural, I suppose. Still, the case could be made that what you had in the eighties with records like My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, Learning To Cope With Cowardice and Dance Hall Style - incidentally some of my favorite records ever - was essentially a dry run for the whole nineties m.o. In short, they play like a hallucination of the future.
TrickyAftermath4th & Broadway
I'm talking about the relationship between Tricky and Mark Stewart, Timbaland and Mtume, Goldie and David Sylvian, The Chemical Brothers and The Bomb Squad, Carl Craig and Kraftwerk, The Neptunes and Prince, Andrew Weatherall and The Clash, Terranova and Manuel Göttsching, Daft Punk and Lil' Louis, Bandulu and Creation Rebel, Drexciya and Hashim, Underworld and... Underworld: it was all hovering there, just below the surface, quietly defining the decade.
The Prodigy present The Dirtchamber Sessions Volume OneXL
Terranova's DJ-Kicks and The Prodigy's Dirtchamber Sessions make this point brilliantly. Alternative rock? Everything laid out by December 31st, 1989. Hip Hop? Logical progression from Straight Outta Compton, Strictly Business and Straight Out The Jungle. Techno and house? Well defined eighties roots. Jungle? Well, you might have me there...
A Guy Called GeraldVoodoo RayRham!
None of this is to take away from the nineties own innovations, which were of course considerable, but to bring them into relief within the context of the surrounding era(s). Much of the music from the eighties that fascinates us in this whole Terminal Vibration saga plays like attempts to work out music from the next decade before the groundwork had even been laid (oftentimes laying the groundwork by default in the process).
Gwen GuthrieTicket To RideIsland
This experimentation took place in the wide-open terrain left in the wake of disco's dominance, more often than not at the interface between post punk and machine funk, which in roundabout fashion answers my initial question: Where does machine funk intersect with post punk? They intersected on the post-disco dancefloor, that wide-open space where anything was possible, where they linked up and rode the wave right up to the present day. Truth be told, we're all still riding it now.
Starting next week, we'll take a look at how it all happened.
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A slight diversion into dub presented by DJ Slye and starring a cast of thousands.
Now that we've reached this point in the whole Terminal Vibration trip — the mid-point to be exact — and what with all the talk of Jah Wobble and bass pressure and dread, well, it got me thinking about the original dub masters and pulling out a bunch of my old dub records and messing around a bit on the turntables. The result was this rough little mix, which was largely inspired by a bunch of my old dub cassettes that used to get a lot of play back in the Colt days. My love affair with dub started in earnest way back in the late 90s with a King Tubby comp — the impetus for my exploration was trip hop, specifically Smith & Mighty's oeuvre — and since then I've never looked back.
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King Tubby at the controls
Put crudely, dub was born on the b-side of the reggae 7" single, where the instrumental version of the a-side would be pressed so that deejays could chat over the top at the soundsystem Saturday night. Eventually, certain producers — producers like King Tubby, Herman Chin-Loy and Lee "Scratch" Perry — started messing around with the master tapes, accentuating particular aspects of the record, beefing up the bottom-end, dropping in snatches of the original vocal and running it all through the effects units, in the process fomenting a musical revolution. This was head music with a heavy beat, and things would never be the same.
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Dennis Bovell is Blackbeard the controller
Full-on dub LPs weren't long after, and dub's methodology (and arsenal of production techniques) even started to creep onto the a-side in more spacious, and spaced out, mixes. Eventually these techniques filtered out into pop music via post punk and disco — thanks to producers like Dennis Bovell, Adrian Sherwood, Walter Gibbons and François Kevorkian — and the rest was history: suddenly the combination of a mixing board and an effects unit became a musical instrument in its own right, and the virtuosos came fast and thick to work their magic in the ensuing years. It's hard to imagine the sound of the 21st century's crop of alternative r&b artists without dub's O.G. mad scientist innovations.
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Lee "Scratch" Perry at the Black Ark
The idea with this particular mix was to trace the dub contagion from its peak-period mid-seventies development alongside contemporary Jamaican roots music through the digital (dancehall) eighties and the big beat nineties on through the next century, stopping off at outposts in dancehall, post punk, techno, trip hop and even grunge(!) before winding up at the lonely, desolate tundras of Rhythm & Sound.
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Rhythm & Sound perform live
The cutoff point was dubstep, which will clearly merit a mix of its own. In truth, I envisioned Dubstyle! as a Star Wars-esque trilogy, with this mix standing as the A New Hope/Downbeat The Dub Ruler entry, to be followed this summer by a post-disco dancefloor extravaganza and wrapping up with an electro-dub/step-r&b apocalypse later this fall. And so... that should give you some idea as to what to expect. Or not?
This is by no means a primer (it actually departs from straight-up dub fairly quickly); think of it instead as a little tribute to a sound that has been very good to me (dub be good to me) over the years, a sound that wouldn't have been possible without a handful of mad producers who pushed their machines to the absolute limit, writing their dreams onto magnetic tape nearly fifty years ago and ushering in the future in the process...
LISTEN NOW
Dubstyle!
Keith HudsonHuntingMamba
Pushing off into Keith Hudson's mystical swamp of dub. The atmosphere comes on thick and heavy from the jump, with a trilling flute, jungle atmospherics, rolling percussion and a jagged guitar cutting its way into the darkness before that bass comes in and washes over EVERYTHING. This is 1974, son.
Augustus PabloKing Tubbys Meets Rockers UptownClocktower
Maybe the most famous dub record ever? Augustus Pablo runs Jacob Miller's Baby I Love You So through King Tubby's illogical deep space machinery and turns in a total killer. With Pablo's melodica stylings in full effect, this righteous slab of Morricone-inflected dub was only just edged out by the ramshackle caravan vibes of East Of The River Nile when I compiled the Parallax 200. Futuristic like Kraftwerk, yet ancient as the Ziggurat of Ur.
King TubbyDub Fi GwanBlood & Fire
As far as I know, this absolute gem only saw the light of day when Blood & Fire put out their Dub Gone Crazy: The Evolution Of Dub At King Tubby's 1975-1979 compilation. Unbelievable! It's a low key masterstroke, replete with moody organ, bottomless bass and exquisitely four-dimensional sound over a slow-motion 4/4 rhythm. The highlight for me is the disembodied Clavinet that materializes in the drop out.
Joe Gibbs & The ProfessionalsGates Of ZionJoe Gibbs
This from the flipside of my 7" reissue of Chalice's Good To Be There, although I'm somewhat certain that it isn't actually called Gates Of Zion; it actually sounds like a dub version of Dennis Brown's Whip Them Jah Jah. I only know this because the actual Gates Of Zion appears on the 12" version of this single, which I tracked down on the strength of this very dub (only to be disappointed!). Confused yet? That's par for the course with reggae... versions all over the shop! Anyway, this is another excellent slab of organ-led discomix reggae — this time in quintessential Joe Gibbs stylee — anchored by a ten ton bassline and haunted by disembodied voices in the ether.
The UpsettersReturn Of The Super ApeIsland
Weird dub from the excellent Scratch-helmed Upsetters LP of the same title, which features striking sleeve art from Tony Wright of a rampaging giant ape holding a tree in one hand and a spliff in the other (surely one of the top five sleeves ever?)! This is peak-period Lee Perry, the mad scientist operating deep within his Black Ark studio and turning out a swampy, sun-glazed groove unlike anything else around. Watch in awe as that sleepwalking, low slung skank gives way to a heavy downbeat in the climax climax... French, you're one of a kind!
AswadA New Chapter Of DubMango
Wicked electronic reggae creeping — like the contemporary work of Prince Jammy — ever so slightly into digidub territory. Got this on the back of a recommendation from the cat behind the counter at the shop where I picked up Return Of The Super Ape... damn, nearly 20 years ago. The star of the show is undoubtedly that fat, wandering electronic bassline, which pair with a rock hard drum beat to drive the group's signature drifting horns along with a mad haunted house grand piano!
Mark Stewart + MaffiaLiberty CityOn-U Sound
Taking an abrupt left turn into abrasive post punk, we've got this killer cut from Stewart's Jerusalem EP, which also features the rock hard High Ideals And Crazy Dreams. Liberty City has that massive Adrian Sherwood-engineered Maffia bottom-end in full effect, joined here by a nagging sax refrain and sublimely spectral backing vocals rising from the ether. These Mark Stewart records are essentially the square root of trip hop. What with the Bristol connection, well, it stacks up. I've often wondered if the sound on these early Maffia records were inspired by the clipped, heavy duty basslines of the early Studio One material (see Burning Spear's debut). And are those discordant cuckoo clock sounds sampled from Fellini's Satyricon? I wonder...
Derrick HarriottDub WhipHawkeye
For me, this dub version of the Dazz Band's Let It Whip is one of thee key records of the eighties, existing as it does at the cusp of the discomix reggae and digital dancehall eras, its heady dub-wise flavors are shot through with the neon glow of contemporary electro boogie. Running parallel to things like Grace Jones' Compass Point records, it also seems to contain the germ of Mtume's Juicy Fruit, Massive Attack's Protection and even SA-RA's The Second Time Around.
Prince JammyMegabyteGreensleeves
The second record in this mix — in a row! — to feature in the recent Parallax 200 extravaganza. This from Jammy's wicked Computerised Dub set. All crisp drums and brittle textures, it's something like contemporary arcade music run through dub's hall of mirrors. Yet another one of these eighties records that mean the world to me, I'd single out it's Kraftwerk-gone-dancehall re-envisioning of Jammy's contemporary digital productions as particularly crucial. I wish I'd picked this up when it came out... five year old me would have loved it.
SoundgardenFopp Fucked Up Heavy Dub RemixSub Pop
AKA Last Action Hero Dub. The second bolt for the blue here, and probably the biggest surprise... bear with me though. This grungetastic cover version of the Ohio Players' Fopp (strangely enough, if you listen to the Players' original, the first minute seems to predict the whole grunge sound, vocal style and all!), taken from Soundgarden's second EP, lays the blueprint for the band's whole warrior chief sound (as heard in Spoonman, et al.). However, the dub version — perpetrated by grunge super-producer Steve Fisk — takes the track to a whole other level, showcasing the possibilities of dub within the context of rock 'n roll fury. With hollowed-out beats and a vastly more spacious mix, the guitar pyrotechnics of the original track compete with snatches of synth, film dialogue and spectral hints of brass and the blues as Chris Cornell's multi-tracked banshee wail pours down over the track like molten silver.
The Future Sound Of LondonPapua New Guinea Dub MixJumpin' & Pumpin'
I've always loved this short little dub version from the Papua New Guinea 12", which says everything it has to in just over a minute. It also makes the dub flavor of the original track — by virtue of its bassline nicked from Radio Babylon — literal, with rock hard drums tumbling down upside your head and down into the echo chamber.
BanduluRun RunBlanco Y Negro
Sprawling deep space reggae from London's premiere electro-dub outfit. Positively holy music, as far as I'm concerned. I used to listen to this over and over back when I first got a hold of it, mind properly blown on the track's fathoms deep bassline and gloriously filmic sweep. Like reggae slowed down and stretched out across glistening infinity's plane. Records like Cornerstone, Guidance and Redemption came on like the ruff, rugged and raw street-level flipside to Basic Channel's elegant dub symphonies. Back in the day, Bandulu were basically my Led Zeppelin.
Peter D.Jah Pure & CleanNubian
Majestic digidub from erstwhile Smith & Mighty secret weapon Peter D. Rose. With sweeping string vistas, synths and an ethereal vocal chorus all flowing into the mix, that tricky riddim still manages to take center stage. Originally from the Dub Out West Volume 1 compilation, I first heard it on Smith & Mighty's DJ-Kicks mix in the late nineties. It took me forever for me to track down its original source in the pre-Discogs era! Incidentally, the windswept drift of this track always makes me think of looking down at the beach from Mayagüez in the late afternoon under overcast skies, rain pouring down on the waves crashing on the horizon.
Terminalhead & Mr. SpeeTwisted System Ruts DC DubPush
The Ruts DC rework is where its at, with that gently gliding rhythm and haunting vocals in the mist taking the track to another plane altogether. I love the way those warped horns elbow their way into the mix from time to time, seemingly trying to wrest control of the track. Percussion like sheet metal phases in and out of the mix. The whole effect is quite uplifting, actually. Ruts DC were a punk band gone dub from the O.G. punk era, who happened to provide dubs to a couple of the Terminalhead records. You sort of wonder about how these things come about. One of the great things about the 90s was the way they were absolutely littered with unlikely little one-offs like this. Corny as it probably sounds, it's a big part of what made growing up in the era so special. I remember thinking at the time that this could have been a huge crossover hit... well it was in my neighborhood anyway.
The Sabres Of ParadiseWilmotWarp
This is essentially a dub version of Black But Sweet by Wilmoth Houdini & The Night Owls, perpetrated by Andrew Weatherall's Sabres Of Paradise. This the single version: the LP version from Haunted Dancehall rides a righteous skank, but strangely enough the block rockin' beats of the single version seemed to make the most sense in this context. That and the deadly Link Wray-esque guitar lines of Tom Baeppler and those maniacal, uncredited female vocals. You want to play this very loud. I've actually got an epic Weatherall feature in the works... so stay tuned.
Primal ScreamDuffed UpCreation
More Adrian Sherwood, this time from much later, dubbing Primal Scream's 1997 LP Vanishing Point to abstraction (in much the same way that the Mad Professor had with Massive Attack's No Protection around the same time) on the Echo Dek mini-album (my version actually came as a box set of 7" singles). This tune is truly unlike anything else: brittle 808 electro drums, dub-wise percussion, harpsichord and a warped horn section collide into a dread hallucination of what jazz might have mutated into in an alternate dimension. Someone really ought to put together an edit of the 1973 film starring Barry Newman with both Scream albums providing the soundtrack...
Bill LaswellCybotronROIR
Majestic dubbed-out slow-motion rotating phone booth music from Bill Laswell, Jah Wobble and Nicky Skopelitis in this post-Material project from the year 2000. This from volume three in the Dub Chamber series, so it's in good company. With a bassline as big as the ocean, this rolls on metronomic breakbeats and sheets of valve-soaked sound sweeping in and out view, receding onto the horizon. It's all rather cinematic. File under Neuromancer: possible soundtrack music, Vol. 127.
Rhythm & SoundCornell CampbellKing In My EmpireRhythm & Sound
Basic Channel in straight up dub reggae mode, with the great Cornell Campbell on the mic. I remember back when these Rhythm & Sound records came out, it took awhile for me to work out it was the Basic Channel guys opening up a new chapter (of dub). These records were so empty, so pristine, so perfect, inhabited by that brilliant, lonely Chain Reaction sound. The other record from that era that I think of in the same breath was Plastikman's Consumed. This actually from a bit later, 2004. Dubstep waiting in the wings...
