Five minutes of sublime music. Five minutes that tells the story of one very important chapter in recent musical history.

What we have here is a 3 or 4 second sample of a very well known song used to create a completely new piece of music. There is some drum machining in there too (created by The Field) but it’s primarily the sample from the original song played over and over again through various pieces of effects technology.   

Yet it sounds stunningly original and precisely of this minute rather than 1984 when the original song was released. It’s a very creative piece of work yet the creativity does not come from the song writing or the musicianship, and it’s certainly not from the words or their meaning as they’ve been left out entirely. The creativity is in the sampling and editing and remixing. What started as Dub experimentation in Jamaica in the late ’60′s with Mixing Desk as musical instrument and Producer as creator (see ABON 0014) has evolved into this.

The debate about the merits and creative morality of this post modern form of creating music versus more traditional song writing and performing is over (surely!). In the light of the sheer beauty, emotion and creativity of much post modern music it has become an academic debate. A more interesting topic for discussion is why the sampling of this particular bit of that song in precisely this way results in a sublime piece of music.

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From the very late ’60′s to the very late ’70′s much of the most inventive and rhythmically exciting music came out of Jamaica. Dub was a vital part of this output. It had its origins in the Sound System – bass-heavy portable disco’s where in the late ’60′s DJ’s began to ‘toast’ live vocals over instrumental B-sides of 45′s. This in turn stimulated studio producers to start experimenting with these same instrumental B-sides to create a whole new genre called Dub.

By the time we get to 1973, the two most prominent Dub producers, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry (leader/creator/producer of The Upsetters) and King Tubby, had turned it into a sublime art form capable of producing pieces of sound that contained equal measures of infectious drum and bass-heavy rhythm and unrestrained inventiveness. Even though many many Dubs would eventually emanate from literally the same original instrumental track, a master Dub mixer could produce a piece of music that was both unique and completely surprising through his or her use of echo, reverb, various other special effects (some usually of the herbal variety) and a dollop of unrestrained imagination.

Dub also introduced us to the concept of the producer/mixer/re-mixer/studio-technician as creative originator. Using the mixing desk as a musical instrument and existing instrumental tracks as musical elements to be bent, reshaped and remixed into completely new songs. Post-modernism before anyone this side of the Atlantic (except possibly in Germany – see ABON 0003) had even heard the phrase. And of course one of its greatest legacies is the cult of the remix in the music scene of today.

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The first of many reggae tracks from the golden period of Jamaican reggae, the 1970′s, that will appear on ABON.
By 1978 Culture had already recorded one of the most influential reggae albums of all time, 1976′s ‘Two Sevens Clash’. That album inspired the reggae loving Clash to name themselves, er, The Clash. It was also one of those very rare events in the 1970′s Britain – a genuine Jamaican-produced roots reggae album that sold in numbers to a white audience. Admittedly most were Punks who took the lead from the Clash or John Peel, but it was also because of the sublime harmonies and wonderful tunes.
It was in some ways a weird success story. Punk was championing unpolished rawer sounds in rock and ridiculing over-production. Culture’s first album was layered with production, was highly polished and very glossy. In particular, the heavy rhythms of the best Jamaican reggae – with the bass featuring more as a physical phenomenon rather than just a musical instrument – was missing from the Joe Gibbs-produced ‘Two Sevens Clash’. It was – God forbid – quite trebly. Punks didn’t seem to mind, although when DJ Don Letts played ‘Two Sevens Clash’ at the punk venue The Roxy, as far as I can tell he always seemed to play it through a graphic equaliser with the bass turned to max.

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