Producing Dub

For this blog post, I decided to use Veal’s concept of how a producer is an artist with Lee Perry’s “Special Dub”. The Special dub is a piece that shows how much creative control the producer has in a song. Unlike times when the producer was just an engineer to get sound on a “recordable medium”, here Lee Perry uses his board as an instrument and it clearly shows through the amount of effects placed on the piece and the incorporated sonorous objects. From this, I have to ask the question: who is more responsible for works nowadays? Is it the producer or the musician? Or are they the same person? This concept is also seen in King Tubby’s Black Lash. Here he uses, trumpets from Johnny Cash’s “Ring Of Fire” and manipulates them over a consistent drum and bass loop to change his song and here the producer is certainly the musician. Here he transforms a song about drug addiction into a upbeat, positive island groove.


“More then any other engineering mixing dub, Perry’s Black Ark suggests the mood of an engineer completely absorbed in the world he is fashioning; this is estatic music created at the mixing board. “