Music Banter - View Single Post - Bulldog and Jackhammer Present: Your Introduction To Reggae

Bulldog · 09-09-2009, 08:06 AM

Mad Professor - Beyond the Realms Of Dub (1982)

Seen as one of the leading lights in the second generation of dub music and thus one of the producers instrumental in seeing a smooth transition for dub through to the digital age, Neil 'Mad Professor' Fraser gets the nod from me here as one of the essentials of the genre. Seeing as after his humble beginnings as a small-time producer of various lover's rock artists on his own label, he branched out to release hundreds of EPs and LPs as well as collaborate with such greats as Lee Perry, Sly & Robbie and Horace Andy, he's well worth a mention too.

The clincher for me, though, would be his 12-part Dub Me Crazy series of LPs. Alright, I'm not lucky enough to have all of them myself, but I'd call the main standout of the bunch Beyond the Realms Of Dub. There are a few reasons for this, one of which being that it's basically the sound of dub remixing ethics going into overdrive with the sheer weight of synthesised sounds, studio treatments, percussive reverbs and vocal overdubs which make for stylistic tour de force of dub. Also, the title track in the video below is among my favourite dub cuts of all time. Enjoy!

Keith Hudson - Pick a Dub (1974)

And then there's Keith Hudson, aka 'the Dark Prince Of Reggae', one of the most influential producers being one of the first such professionals to experiment that way with a mixing desk, like his contemporaries King Tubby and Lee Perry. His is also a name that you'll find popping up in various places in early reggae history, from organising concerts with schoolmates Delroy Washington and Bob Marley to producing his first record by a band which would later evolve into the Skatalites, not to mention his classic Flesh Of My Skin, Blood Of My Blood album being among the first genuine reggae albums and not just a collection of singles.

That was in 1975, so rewind to 1974 and then we're talking proper context. Pick a Dub here is as highly regarded as a classic as the aforementioned album but, as you may have guessed, for very different reasons, the most important of them being that if this wasn't the first deliberately thematic dub album, it was certainly one of the very first examples of a selection of dubs (among them revisions of the Abyssinians' Satta Massagana and Declaration Of Rights) mixed and stitched together in order to make up a full-length LP of dub music. As a result of the superb production and mixing from Hudson, we have a classic, groovalicious album, backed up in places by the sparse use of his rasping kind of vocal, of unrelenting quality that just fits together seamlessly. An absolute must.

09-09-2009, 08:06 AM	#61 (permalink)
Bulldog why bother? Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: UK Posts: 4,840	Mad Professor - Beyond the Realms Of Dub (1982) Seen as one of the leading lights in the second generation of dub music and thus one of the producers instrumental in seeing a smooth transition for dub through to the digital age, Neil 'Mad Professor' Fraser gets the nod from me here as one of the essentials of the genre. Seeing as after his humble beginnings as a small-time producer of various lover's rock artists on his own label, he branched out to release hundreds of EPs and LPs as well as collaborate with such greats as Lee Perry, Sly & Robbie and Horace Andy, he's well worth a mention too. The clincher for me, though, would be his 12-part Dub Me Crazy series of LPs. Alright, I'm not lucky enough to have all of them myself, but I'd call the main standout of the bunch Beyond the Realms Of Dub. There are a few reasons for this, one of which being that it's basically the sound of dub remixing ethics going into overdrive with the sheer weight of synthesised sounds, studio treatments, percussive reverbs and vocal overdubs which make for stylistic tour de force of dub. Also, the title track in the video below is among my favourite dub cuts of all time. Enjoy! Keith Hudson - Pick a Dub (1974) And then there's Keith Hudson, aka 'the Dark Prince Of Reggae', one of the most influential producers being one of the first such professionals to experiment that way with a mixing desk, like his contemporaries King Tubby and Lee Perry. His is also a name that you'll find popping up in various places in early reggae history, from organising concerts with schoolmates Delroy Washington and Bob Marley to producing his first record by a band which would later evolve into the Skatalites, not to mention his classic Flesh Of My Skin, Blood Of My Blood album being among the first genuine reggae albums and not just a collection of singles. That was in 1975, so rewind to 1974 and then we're talking proper context. Pick a Dub here is as highly regarded as a classic as the aforementioned album but, as you may have guessed, for very different reasons, the most important of them being that if this wasn't the first deliberately thematic dub album, it was certainly one of the very first examples of a selection of dubs (among them revisions of the Abyssinians' Satta Massagana and Declaration Of Rights) mixed and stitched together in order to make up a full-length LP of dub music. As a result of the superb production and mixing from Hudson, we have a classic, groovalicious album, backed up in places by the sparse use of his rasping kind of vocal, of unrelenting quality that just fits together seamlessly. An absolute must.