The first minute of Jukebox Capriccio by Christian Marclay : a Listening by Andrew Edwards

Sounds crackle, an object emerges. Flickering and popping. It collapses and wiggles, then explodes outwards again, forming a recognizable representational image in my mind, though shrouded in more twisting and contortions. Its almost impossible for the landscape not to take on recognizable forms here. Higher brighter sharpness shoot out of the main form. They coalesce into a denser form and then collapse. One cycle emerges, repeating and folding back into itself while a second tries to form recognizable images but is continually exploding out of it. The whole field forms a jumble and then Breaks into a static screech. A cascading rhythm falls away then trickles in itself lower. Wiggles and thumps. A twisting blast and then hoarse wheezing honks loop. Melody tracks slips beneath moving honks wheezing. Recognizable rhythms attempt to emerge, but on top of them a twisting melding stream spirals around and then falls away. Three trains of motion, One: rhythms chomping away until they form another cascade that falls from high to low, while TWO; The wiggle melody is trying to squirm its way though, while THIRD: A steady chordal harmonic song is rising. Then as the First falls into cascade the Second twists and spirals in on itself, and the drumming rhythms take over the field. A honk emerges and folds itself to the right. The THREE forms battle for the stage as the rightward honking blasts one, two, three. It is growing with higher blips. Rhythm and shards of melody loop and continue… This work is dense, with multiple lines twisting alongside each other. The stage is never still, with new lines pushing down others continually. It is always changing.

Domestication and Reclamation of Space in Dub

The rise of commodity scientism in the 1950's, as Timothy Taylor points out in Strange Sounds, began to confuse domesticated space and authority. While women were consuming space age kitchen appliances, men took on the hi-fi as a tool "to reclaim some domestic space and authority in the home". (Taylor 79) What would this domestication and reclamation sound like in Dub, a genre in which much of its music production took place in domesticated space (such as Lee Perry's Black Ark) with high technologies?

The home as the domestic space is a place of familiarity, where goings-on can be controlled. Riddims in dub music inhibit similar feelings as they are generic progressions that form the basis of these songs. The bass and saxophone lull in King Tubby's "Bag a Wire Dub" forming a space of familiarity and safety, allowing the listener over the the 3 minutes to become intimate with the riddim. The reclamation of this domesticated space takes place when (often) arrthymically, we hear a reverberated clang, which is probably King Tubby abusing his spring reverb unit. The domesticated space is disintegrated; it becomes fragmented and interrupted challenging the established safety within the riddim. "Bag a Wire Dub" is a constant flux of riddim-domesticated space and clang-reclaimed space. Scientist's "Beam Down" inhibits this flux in a slightly different way. A bass line creates a smooth, regular riddim with slight variations of reverb added. However, throughout the track, similar clangs and drum hits fragment the space created by the riddims, gradually growing in intensity throughout the track. The volume of these clangs grows throughout the track, reminiscent of of the hifi's volume level causing "spatial/spousal conflict" within the home. (Taylor 80) Much like how the hifi emerged as a reclaimer of domestic space, the abused spring reverb unit reclaims songs from the riddim.