Augustus Pablo & King Tubby - "King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown"

Michael Veal explains in his book Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae that “the most important understanding of the dub mix is as a deconstructive, B-side remix of a 45 rpm single; the remix engineer draws on various strategies to manipulate the listener’s anticipation of musical events, and defamiliarize the vocal song on the A-side” (64). Some “various strategies” commonly employed by engineers and producers of dub music are the effects of fragmentation, reverberation and delay. Fragmentation, which refers to the technique of cutting out vocals of the remixed tracks to create a more poignant and interpretive lyrical content, was used to “create abrupt shifts in ensemble texture” (64). Then, sound engineers used delay to create rhythmic effects, which gives the dub track its characteristic echo; the reverberation technique then takes the delay effects and creates an environment in which one hears the song. Veal describes the function and relationship of these techniques in the genre of dub mixing: fragmentation creates the tension, and reverb connects it all back together. In the track “King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown,” from a collaborative dub album with the same name by Augustus Pablo and King Tubby, we see these techniques demonstrated by some of the earliest in the dub scene: the vocals in the song are simply “Baby I’ve… that love,” and at the very end “Baby I love you so,” a grossly fragmented and deconstructed version of the original “Baby I Love You So” by Jacob Miller. The lack of much vocal content makes the few words heard carry a stronger message. The instrumental portion of the mix is punctuated with delay echo effects and reverberation techniques such as panning to give the track a sense of movement within the sound space, and a laid-back rhythmical cohesion. The strategies used in this track are not exclusive to the pioneers of dub: they continue to be used in more recent dub remixes, such as “Radiation Ruling the Nation [Protection],” Mad Professor’s dub remix of Massive Attack’s track. The same fragmentation of lyrical content can be heard, as well as frequent use of delay and reverberation.

The Poetry of Dub

In Michael E. Veals book Dub he states that “although dub music is largely an instrumental medium, one of the most immediately recognizable sonic features of the dub mix is the way song lyrics are omitted and/or fragmented…”(P.64) along with “the interplay of echo and equalization enabled engineers to make simulated sound spaces as if they were continually morphing in dimension and texture”. (P.73) With in the first ten seconds of the song “A Rougher Version” by King Tubby featuring The Aggrovators we hear song lyrics but it is only about a 20 second clip of an echoing voice talking about being oppressed and humbling yourself, which is slowly being smothered by underlying rhythm of trumpets or horns that is coming forward. At the end of the snippet of lyrics the voice trails off in an eco that morphs into the underlying rhythm that is smothering it. The voice echoes back into existence about half way through the song. Stating only time will tell and not to end badly. Which the words are accented by the rhythm of random horns or trumpets that can be heard through out the song. The voice echoes back one more time towards the end of the song but the lyrics are sung and the echoing effect makes the words non distinguishing from one another and eco into each other making there own beat on top of the already slow and methodical tempo. Because of the use of the eco effect on every note in the song the beat is very jerky and almost gives you the feeling of walking around with something weighing you down. Which would make since that the feeling of the song matches the topic of being oppressed.

Les Baxter - Celestial Nocturne

"Celestial Nocturne" by Harry Revel represents what was contemporarily a "new" direction of music more in thought than in terms of what music actually shipped on the album. Timothy Taylor writes of Revel's music that it "Pushed the envelope in ways that weren't strictly technical." (Strange sounds, 73). Essentially, the music heard on the album is an almost fundamentally generic easy listening sound from its era. Taylor, however points out that this album did in fact make two firsts in musical history. The first, indeed, was not musical at all: the cover of the record was the first to ship with a color LP cover. The second is central to the music's theme but not structure: the use of a theramin. This instrument is used on the album, but it is backseat to lounge piano and choirs, and even to trumpets and other traditional band music. Nonetheless, "celestial Nocturne" and and "lunar Rhapsody" are among a host of other tracks on Revel's Music out of the moon that tie themselves to outer space to grant legitamacy and freshness to what would, without its minor use of new technology in production and packaging, have been an altogether unremarkable album. Nor was Revel alone. He was, in fact, indicative of a trend that would follow of similar easy listening albums like Ron Goodman's music in orbit that would market a technological progress rather than a music one with space imagery.

Drum & Bass - Dub

Within the pages of Michael Veal’s book Dub, he remarks on the concept of the drum and bass as an emphasis for the tracks. Rather than being all about the horns, lyrics, other instruments, etc, mixes with a “drum and bass” focus would be primarily stripped of the rest of the traditional dub pieces: “A typical drum & bass mix would focus on the propulsive motion of those to instruments throughout, with the chordal instruments only occasionally filtering through” (Veal 57). An example of this would be King Tubby’s “Silver Bullet – The Observer All Stars,” which is primarily a bass-driven track, with rhythm from other instruments coming through, but the bass is what is coming through the most, even though horns come in occasionally. This was not always a trend in Dub, even King Tubby’s work reveals that. For example, his song “The Aggrovators” is not focused on the bass or drum rhythm at all. In fact, the vocals and the other instruments, like the horns, outweigh the bass in the mix.

King Tubby - Fittest of the Fittest Dub

“In fact, although dub is certainly a genre of Jamaican music, it might be most accurate to think of it as such a process: a process of a song remixing or, more accurately, song re-composition. The fact that the dub mix is a version of a preexisting song that allows fragments of its prior incarnations to remain audible as an obvious part of the final product, makes it conducive to such conceptualizing; it can be linked with similar technology—based processes in other artistic media such as the serial reuse of images, collage manipulations of texture, and compositional procedures based on chance. An excerpt from Michael Veal’s book Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae.  When listening to King Tubby’s track Fittest of the Fittest Dub, you can really hear the process of dub. For instance the underlying bass takes you through this track, then hits the ears with vocals and keyboards that have reverberation attached to them, which first draws you in. Following is some lighter beats that take you in and out of a mixture of horns, vocals and the overlapping beat, and then right back into it again. This track reiterates the aspect of dub being a process of dissecting a variety of material and generating a completely different sound. Another track that has similar qualities to King Tubby’s and gives a good example for dub being a process is Marcus Garvey’s track Marcus Garvey.  Both tracks open with a heavy beat however with Marcus Garvey the opening beat is much heavier as well as vocals do not have a reverb connected to it. In continuing to compare the two tracks Marcus Garvey has a constant flow of vocals overlapping the beat a bit more than Tubby’s, but both do show how dub is a process of taking different fragments and creating a new collage.   

The Process of Dub

In Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae, Michael Veal explains that Dub music is best described as a process. Dub music is a version of re-mixing and recomposing pre-existing songs and creating something new in which bits and pieces of the original recording can still be heard. Similar to the idea of collaging and overlapping images and textures. (pg 21-22) One example of the is "Beam Down" by Scientist. The majority of the song is filled with heavy repetitive beats, but softer, more abstract sounds can still be heard in the background creating an overlapping effect. As th song progresses more beats and consistent sounds are added in and out throughout the track. Again, this is an example of combining pre-existing tracks and sounds. Prince Jammy's "Jammin' for Survival" is a little more dynamic in that there is more overlap between the variations of sounds and doesn't produce as much as a distant feel as "Beam Down."

Jools Holland Interviews Lee Scratch Perry

Here's an excerpt from the 1985 film, "Jools in Jamaica":