Dub'n XTC

Given recent world events you wouldn’t be blamed for wanting to disappear to another space and time. Somewhere free from megalomaniac billionaires and where Prince, Bowie and Lemmy where still producing the goods. I think I’m still in the denial stage of grief about 2016 as a year. Escape isn’t an option of course and unfortunately you just have to deal with the hand you are dealt.


I’ve been trying to clear some mental space to work in lately. It’s good therapy. My little guys have been leaving me the sketches for some new stuff and I need to have a nice big barn to play in. The easiest way I found of taking your head to another space and time is to immerse yourself in dub. Some might call it escapist, I call it a holiday. And not just in the Jamaican sense of a holiday, (although the best dub obviously has that connecting flight), I mean an otherworldly holiday. The best dub will take you anywhere you want to go. When I listen to serious dub I often find myself wandering in a nocturnal forest where the trees have lost their leaves and a distant city provides the only source of light and noise. I’ve got no idea why – I don’t analyse stuff like that. If it’s good to you why fight it.

Now I know what you are thinking, and no, you don’t have to hit the herbal highway to go places with dub. Legendary dub master King Tubby never touched the stuff when he was working in his studio. The same can’t be said for Lee Perry, but then he was on a planet of his own to start with. What most of the early dub masters had in common was a root in DIY electronics. They were studio technicians interested in manipulating sound with home made devices. They also happened to be in an environment where they largely had the freedom to make their own rules. Being very good at what they did didn’t do any harm either.

Commercially dub is a non-starter. It works best in a live situation. It started out as an add-on to the top hits of the day played at Sound System parties in Jamaica. People wanted to hear an extended groove so they could dance it out some more. That completed, the DJ would talk/sing over the track to take it to wherever the crowd wanted it to go. That gave rise to the whole toaster genre in Jamaican music. Basically a direct parallel to the first rappers at US block parties. The root of it all goes back to the studio and the electronic wizardry applied to turn the rhythm track into a stand-alone piece of music. Let’s face it 3-4 minutes of bass and drums would be nothing without some added highlights, no matter how cool the bassline is.

The first dub LPs were pretty basic affairs along the lines described above. That was until the aforementioned King Tubby and Lee Perry began developing their studio techniques on the rhythm tracks they had open access to in their studios. Pretty soon dub versions were the essential companion to the standard commercial release for any artist’s work, and toasters like I-Roy, Big Youth and U-Roy became established as artists in their own right.

There is enough classic dub available on Youtube to keep you going for the rest of your life. A lot of it consists of vinyl rips off scratchy copies of rare, long out of print LPs, but that isn’t a problem. It does highlight the need to look after your vinyl and get a decent turntable though, but that’s another matter. Start searching on King Tubby, Scientist, Prince Jammy and Lee Perry and go from there. You’ll soon notice that each dub master has their own signature sound that’s as recognisable as a fingerprint.

I hate the concept of ‘the best’, but my favourite dub LP is Slum which features Gregory Isaacs tracks dubbed by Prince Jammy. It’s filed as a Gregory Isaacs LP but his voice hardly ever appears across any of the ten tracks. It’s a brilliant piece of music on its own because of the intricate balance between the studio effects alongside the original tunes and brief vocal snatches. It’s more than simply dub in other words. Lee Perry uses a similar approach, but his works are much denser and less focussed, and his output is so vast it’s hard to know where to start. Scientist and King Tubby are strictly dub. Their dubs are what people think of first when they think of dub as a concept. King Tubby came first but Scientist took it further.

The influence of reggae on the British punk movement in the late 70s is pretty well documented and it’s safe to say it was a symbiotic relationship. The Clash and The Ruts took to it wholeheartedly both musically and culturally. So did The Slits but they were horrid. Others watered it down but managed to produce some worthwhile stuff. But what of dub in all this? Well, it did make it across to Britain too, but its influence wasn’t as far reaching. Its most obvious influence, outside of local reggae outfits, came out in groups like PiL and the Pop Group with a stripped down bass and drums approach to song writing, but there were only really a couple of Jamaican-style British dub masters. Of these Mad Professor is the most prolific, producing a staggering number of LPs over a long period of time, and turning dub into live performance while he was at it. His take on dub is genius along the lines of the Slum LP above – adding as much new stuff as he took away to make each track a new composition in what’s almost a jazz style. Check out any of the twelve volumes of his Dub Me Crazy series to see what I mean. The work of Denis Bovell with dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnston is also essential. This takes toasting into slightly more serious territory, but still delivers the goods at the bottom end.

I'm going to end this very scholarly post with XTC. ‘Why?’ I hear you ask. The reggae influence in XTC’s sound is limited to a couple of singles and some LP tracks, and it’s often so well disguised its unrecognisable, so why bother mentioning them here? Well, they are one of my favourite bands for one reason, but also because of a single side project completed by front man Andy Partridge in 1980 that uses dub principles to produce completely new compositions from mix ups of songs from their first three albums. Andy’s Take Away/Lure of Salvage is a real gem. Why more bands haven’t followed this course is a real mystery. Not having the talent could be one reason, but even Andy never tried to repeat it so perhaps it is just a solitary stroke of genius. Some of the tracks are better than the originals they are taken from, like New Broom which openly competes with their classic single Making Plans for Nigel, and The Rotary that kicks the hell out of its parent Helicopter. As a landmark of creativity the album stands as a little island of madness in a vast ocean of blandness. It’s long out of print but it was released (incompletely) as Explode Together on CD a long time back as an XTC disc. You need to hear it, and you also need to get the three LPs the original tracks come from while you are at it. Plus their fourth album Black Sea just because it’s so good. Did I mention they are one of my favourite bands? Google some live XTC bootlegs to see why they were one of the most dynamic live acts ever as well – they’ll be on Youtube. Most everything is.

As with all these posts there is a link back to Hopkinsville Gobins tracks. Find out why on Amazon, I-Tunes, Spotify, Deezer and Google Play, or from any of the purveyors of fine sounds listed on this site. You can also get your Paypal on at Bandcamp.

Or try before you buy on Soundcloud.

And don’t forget to check out Amerikaemia while you are at it. There will be a dub version of that coming up on their next project.