This might just be the most significant 2 minutes 27 seconds of music that has been posted on ABON so far. Because…

Back in the late ’60′s Jamaican DJ’s fronting the enormous, and enormously loud, Sound Systems that toured the island started ‘toasting’. Which involved ad-libbing over the rhythm and in between the singing on the 7″ hit singles they were playing. U-Roy was one of these DJs.

At some point around 1968 he met the then unknown King Tubby who was a disc cutter and engineer at Duke Reid’s studio. Duke Reid ran the Treasure Isle label which was producing many of the hit singles U-Roy would have been playing at Sound System parties. King Tubby of course had access to the rhythm tracks that sat behind the vocals on these singles. And he started experimenting with these tracks – producing what would turn out to be the forerunners of Dub. He also started to give these tracks to DJs like U-Roy to toast over live.

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Dub of the late ’70′s variety. By when Dub had evolved in many different directions. Lee Perry and King Perry were still evolving dub (which they’d effectively invented earlier in the ’70′s) into what I suppose could be called ‘classic’ dub – percussion and bass-heavy with a focus on hypnotic grooves (see ABON 0014). Meanwhile producers like Joe Gibbs (with his engineer and mixer Errol Thompson) and Scientist were creating a different dub style. Maybe best described as Dub-with-everything-and-the-kitchen-sink-thrown-in.

With far less emphasis on the bass and rhythm it left room for a more tuneful sound with bucketfuls of sound effects and samples thrown in – from strange blips and burps to doorbells, phones and computer game soundtracks to cowbells, animals and toy instruments.

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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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