Twelve dub records, in order
A route through dub itself rather than through reggae: twelve albums in sequence, from the first tentative experiments to the point where the method left Jamaica altogether.
Soundsystem Music
Roots and dub were never really album music. They were built for a room, a stack of speakers and a selector who knows what the crowd needs before the crowd does.
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The mixing desk became an instrument
In a small room in Waterhouse, King Tubby stopped using a mixing desk to balance records and started using it to play them. Everything we call dub comes out of that decision.
Rockers, and how Channel One changed the drum
A studio on Maxfield Avenue, a house band with something to prove, and a drummer who put the kick on every beat. Reggae's centre of gravity moved and never quite moved back.
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Building the bass
A roots sound system is not a big hi-fi. It is a room-sized instrument built by hand, tuned by ear, and designed around one frequency range most speakers never reach.
What the songs are actually saying
Roots reggae is often heard as pleasant music with a faint spiritual atmosphere. Listen to the words and it is something much more specific, and much less comfortable.
Version excursion
The instrumental on the back of the single started as a way to save money. It ended up producing an entire way of making music, and eventually most of modern pop production.
Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires
A 1981 dub album with a comic book sleeve and a silly title that happens to be one of the sharpest, funniest and best sequenced records the form has produced.
Studio One was the university
Almost everybody who mattered in Jamaican music passed through one building on Brentford Road. What came out of it is still the common language the whole music speaks.
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