For many, the seventies typifies the golden age of reggae, linking the vocal sweetness of the sixties with the harder-edged music that was to follow. Falling into this period is much of the excellent music to be found on this introductory disc to the joys of dub featuring some cracking cuts from the likes of King Tubby, Lee Perry and Errol ‘ET’ Thompson.
You’re never going to compile a single album that claims to offer the definitive collection of dub reggae (there’s just too much good stuff) but The Rough Guide To Dub in focusing largely on the 1970s and the output of King Tubby is as good a place to start as any.
Growing out of the ‘instrumentals’ (custom acetate cuts with the vocal track taken out of the mix to be played at the dancehall) at the end of the sixties, the dub process was kick started when engineer Osbourne ‘Tubby’ Ruddock got his resident deejay U-Roy to improvise lyrics over the acetate or ‘dub plates. Further developments came in the mix with delay and reverb and the wider popularisation of the form through other great innovators such as Channel One and Joe Gibbs studios and enginners and producers like Errol Thompson, Ossie Hibbert and Lee Perry at his Black Ark Studio.
Taken from various reissues from Blood & Fire personal favourite tracks include Conquering Dub: Yabby You Meets King Tubby from the outstanding album Prophesy of Dub; Noah Sugar Pan: Upsetters from the Lee Perry produced (and again a must-have album) Heart of the Congos and No Problem: Horace Andy Meets Prince Jammy, the B-side to Andy’s Don’t Let Problems Get You Down.
Tracks:
1. Ordinary Version Chapter 3
2. Satia — Keith Hudson
3. Conquering Dub
4. Lightning & Thunder — Morwell Unlimited
5. Shooter Dub
6. Behold a Dub
7. Chapter of Money — Aggrovators
8. Satta Dread Dub — Aggrovators
9. Repatriation Rock — Vivian “Yabby U” Jackson
10. World Dub: Away With the Bad
11. Dub Zone — Ja-Man All Stars
12. Wire Dub — E.T.
13. Noah Sugar Pan
14. No Problem — Horace Andy
15. Dub the Right Way
16. Down Rhodesia
17. Zambia Dub
18. Moses Dub — Revolutionaries
19. Nuclear Bomb — Revolutionaries
20. General Version — Prince Jammy
