Wha iz Dub ?
highstory of dub
Dub music evolved from early instrumental reggae music and "versions" that incorporated fairly primitive reverb and echo sound effects.
In 1968, Kingston, Jamaica sound system operator Ruddy Redwood went to Duke Reid's Treasure Isle studio to cut a one-off dub plate. Engineer Byron Smith left the vocal track out by accident, but Redwood kept the result and played it at his next dance with his deejay Wassy toasting over the rhythm.
Errol Thompson engineered the first strictly instrumental reggae album entitled The Undertaker by Derrick Harriott and the Crystalites released in 1970. This innovative album credits "Sound Effects" to Derrick Harriott.
Whilst some have tried to attribute the "invention" of dub music to just one person, by 1973, instrumental reggae "versions" from various studios had evolved into "dub" as a sub genre of reggae. Through the simultaneous efforts of several independent Jamaican innovators, these competitive engineers and producers worked hard to leapfrog each other with each subsequent dub release with no single person being able to claim all the credit for the origination of "dub" as a genre.
In 1973, at least two producers, Lee "Scratch" Perry and the Aquarius studio engineer/producer team of Herman Chin and Errol Thompson simultaneously recognized that there was an active market for this new "dub" sound and consequently they started to release the first strictly 100% dub albums. Lee Perry released Blackboard Jungle Dub in the Spring of 1973. It is considered a landmark recording of this genre.
It was not until 1975 that King Tubby was internationally recognized as the premier dub artist/innovator/producer with the release of his two debut albums King Tubby Meets The Upsetter At The Grass Roots Of Dub and Surrounded By the Dreads at the National Arena. He was then immediately hailed as the leading dub music innovator of the day.
Recent Istory
Dub has continued to progress from that point to this, its popularity waxing and waning with changes in musical fashion. Almost all reggae singles still carry an instrumental version on the B-side and these are still used by the sound systems as a blank canvas for live singers and djs.
In the 1980s, Britain became a new center for dub production with Mad Professor and Jah Shaka being the most famous, while Scientist became the heavyweight champion of Jamaican dub. It was also the time when dub made its influence known in the work of harder edged, experimental producers such as Adrian Sherwood and the roster of artists on his On-U Sound label. Many of the bands characterized as post-punk were heavily influenced by dub. More well-known bands such as The Police and UB40 helped popularise Dub with UB40's Present Arms In Dub album being the first ever dub album to hit the UK top 40.
In the 1990s and beyond, dub has been influenced by and in turn influenced techno, jungle, dubstep, drum and bass, house music, trip hop, ambient music, and hip hop, with many electronic dub or dubtronica tracks produced by nontraditional musicians from these other genres. Musicians such as Bill Laswell, Jah Wobble, Leftfield, Ott, Massive Attack, Bauhaus, The Clash, Killing Joke, PiL, the Disco Biscuits, The Orb, Rhythm & Sound, Pole, Deadbeat, Underworld, De Facto, Sublime, Thievery Corporation, Gorillaz and others demonstrate clear dub influences in their respective genres, and their innovations have in turn influenced the mainstream of the dub genre. In the UK, Europe, Japan and America independent record producers are making dub. The Polish punk/psychedelic band Brygada Kryzys recorded some outright dub tracks, there is a Serbian dub band, Black Ark Crew and a Basque dub band Basque Dub Foundation. DJs appeared towards the end of the 1990s who specialised in playing music by these musicians, such as the UK's Unity Dub.
The influence of dub is often indirect. The early work of British punk rock group Gang of Four in the late 1970s, for example, featured several elements borrowed by dub singer Jon King occasionally played melodica (a staple of dub) and the basslines were sometimes reminiscent of reggae. Perhaps more importantly, one of Gang of Four's characteristic traits was almost certainly inspired by dub: in nearly every song on their debut, Entertainment! one of the three instruments (guitar, bass or drums) abruptly stopping playing, while the other musicians continued for a portion of the song. This was essentially a real-time imitation of the way instruments were dropped in and out of the recoding on a dub track.
Dub has also been adopted by the punk rock camp, with bands such as Rancid and NOFX writing original songs in a Dub style. Often bands thought to be Ska-Punk play very dub influenced songs, the first such popular was Sublime, with both dub originals and remixes. They went on to influence more recent American bands such as Rx Bandits and The Long Beach Dub Allstars. There also some British punk bands creating dub music, Capdown released their Civil Disobedients album with track Dub #2, while The King Blues take very heavy influences from dub, mixing the genre with original punk ethics and attitudes.
Traditional dub has, however, survived (see Iration Steppas and Aba Shanti-I, for example) and some of the originators like Lee Perry and Mad Professor continue to produce new material. One modern dub producer who has received critical acclaim is Ryan Moore, for his Twilight Circus project. In the United States, a recent wave of new bands have adopted dub as their musical focus, including Dub Is A Weapon, best known for backing up Lee Perry during his most recent tours of the US.
Like Hits From The Bong ...dub hits can do it to you all night long.
(IMEEM is an online community where artists, fans & friends can promote their content, share their tastes, and discover blogs, photos, music and video.)
and thot this is just (one of) what I might be missing with last.fm .
don't get me wrong open source and all that last.fm does have alot going for it and I am (mostly)really digging it over there at last.
imeem lets me (and you) sort and playlist order music, so now we are looking (and finding online) music by artist and then by song title and then we get to play it out in the order we want to ! so I'm waiting for the sky to fall on this thing but til then go, now, and playlist order your own musical wish lists.
interesting how to's over at instructables
and I'll continue on later...
