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.
History
Where the music came from: the studios, the engineers and the records that set the shape of it.
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.
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.
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.
Sleng Teng and the day the music went digital
In 1985 a preset rhythm from a cheap Casio keyboard went to number one in Jamaica and took the whole industry with it. Forty years on, people are still arguing about what was lost.
U-Roy and the birth of the deejay
Somebody talking over a record was not a new idea. Doing it so well that the talking became the record was, and one man on King Tubby's sound worked out how.