Essential Dub Records: 1973-1985

Contenders for Jamaica’s first dub album include Clement “Coxsone” Dodd, released under his pseudonym Dub Specialist. But in of lasting critical impact, the 1973 standout came from the mercurial reggae icon and producer Lee Perry.

Credited as CD digipak edition.

Starting out as a producer for Keith Hudson got his start as a singer in the early 1970s before taking a behind-the-scenes roll. Hudson’s time commanding the production desk gave him an intimate knowledge of a studio’s technical possibilities and the changing trends in Jamaican reggae. By the end of 1973, he had already engineered various dubwise versions of roots, dancehall DJ, and rocksteady tracks. An album composed entirely of dub cuts was the next logical step.

Horace Andy and Big Youth.

While Tubby and Perry made full use of the studio effects on offer for Blackboard Jungle, Hudson’s genius on Pick A Dub skewed minimal, almost skeletal, an album where the music itself, not the experiments, stood front and center. 

Creation Of Dub album, bristles with experimentation. 

Having spent time watching Tubby tinker with a new suite of effects and homemade instruments, he decided to use the pioneer’s studio for his dub debut. Instrumentation came from Lee’s venerated house band, Robbie Shakespeare and others), with the team working on instrumental versions from Lee’s back catalog. All the stars aligned for the set, and the outcome was a darkly resounding collection of deep new dubs.

Lee Perry’s original house band, the Upsetters, had included brothers Aston and Carlton Barrett. By 1972, the duo had left to complete Bob Marley’s Wailers line-up, but their replacements were equally adept.

With Super Ape reinvented a list of the producer’s hottest tracks. 

For “Croaking Lizard,” Perry invited dancehall DJ Devon Irons’ devotional “When Jah Comes” track, and “Black Vest” dubbed up another major Max Romeo hit, “War Inna Babylon.”

The overall mood here is spiritual, the album’s heavy Rastafarian overtones make Super Ape a standout set in the canon.  

After working on Tappa Zukie’s In Dub album, Philip Smart relocated to New York to set up his HC&F studio. In need of a replacement, Tubby called on Yabby You.

Put together by the Blood and Fire imprint and released in 1996, Wayne Smith’s 1985 smash, “Under Me Sleng Teng.” 

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, the Revolutionaries providing the roots reggae foundations. 

Producer Channel One studio. Led by Sly Dunbar, the collective was capitalizing on Dunbar’s invention of the rockers rhythm, a tougher style of drumming that superseded reggae’s traditional one drop rhythm wherein the emphasis was on the third beat in a bar. Thompson conducted the project from behind the production desk, folding in Dunbar’s rockers-style drumming on an album that walks the line between brilliant roots reggae and cavernous, late ’70s dub.

Cut. 

By 1980, Johnson and Bovell had been making albums together for three years, with Bovell’s production and backing band underpinning Johnson’s righteous poetry. Unlike the Johnson and Bovell’s LKJ In Dub isn’t a poetry album. Instead, Bovell (credited as Blackbeard) lays down dub versions of tracks composed for Johnson’s poems on previous releases, showcasing how U.K. dub could be faster-paced and less spacey than its Jamaican cousin.    

Another of King Tubby’s acolytes, Hopeton Brown’s production career was kickstarted after Tubby gave him access to the controls at his Dromilly Road studio in Kingston. Brown knew his way around analog electronics – he had trained as an electrical engineer – and, after adopting his the Roots Radics.

For Wayne Jarrett. The Roots Radics once again provided instrumentation. Both albums build on the harder, rockers-style direction of roots reggae, with Brown creating dubwise worlds that shake with low-end bass and spiraling electro effects.

Along with the late, great Mad Professor” Fraser ensured that the U.K. dub scene stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Jamaican productions. By the early ’80s, digital technology had begun to seep into reggae production, and labels and producers were moving towards a new dancehall sound that updated ground broken by Jamaican DJs in the 1970s. 

Working in his self-built London studio, Fraser, however, saw how advances in digital electronics could be useful in the dub realm and Beastie Boys, and others. 

The Rhythm Twins were central characters in reggae’s story, featuring on a dizzying amount of crucial cuts and breaking out of the Jamaican music sphere to collaborate with some of the biggest names in music. Released in 1985, Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare’s A Dub Experience album works as a snapshot of the duo’s dub work from the analog 1970s and into the digital experiments of the early 1980s. 

Highlights on the set include “Destination Unknown,” a version of the title track from Reggae Greats series and a hits album of sorts, A Dub Experience is a tribute to the dub work of two of reggae’s most illustrious talents.