Dub Reggae: Origins and Influence

The origins of Dub reggae trace back to the 1950’s Kingston Jamaica, where local DJs would load up trucks with turntables, p.a. systems, and massive speakers to create mobile “soundsystems” for parties and concerts. Originally playing American R&B/Motown records and radio stations, soundsystem DJs moved towards focusing on local musicians as Ska emerged in response to the American sounds. Like R&B, with Ska the musical emphasis was rhythmic, walking bass lines and four on the floor drums. In the mid-60’s, the music evolved into a slower, more melodic style known as Rocksteady, which was later was slowed down even more to become reggae.

Soundsystem DJ’s were pressed to deliver the latest and most original tracks to play, leading many to produce “dubplates,” exclusive remixes of a current single. While making a dubplate, one popular soundsystem DJ Osbourne Ruddock (King Tubby) accidently left off the vocal track. Already known for his use of echo in dubplate producing, Ruddick dug the vocal-less track and began playing stripped down, heavily mixed and effected “versions” of popular singles. Soon, nearly every single released in Jamaica came accompanied with bare-bones, instrumental, and extended version. And dub was born.

Stylistically, dub shares many of the same musical traits as reggae: heavy, heavy bass lines, four on the floor drums, syncopated hi-hat work and downbeat beat snare clicks. The main distinguishing element is production; with dub, the producer becomes an artist and the studio becomes both a compositional tool and an instrument in itself. Dub production utilizes huge amounts of echo, reverb, phasing, panning, and fading (though sounds are often very specific to a single producer) to create an expansive and fluid echo chamber version of an original (an interesting creative model in general). Marijuana use abounds in dub contexts, which makes sense given the reverberating and spatial qualities of the music.

In the 70’s, dub evolved into a singular and extremely progressive musical form. Other producers began to arise with their own signature sound and style. Lee “Scratch” Perry (aka the Upsetter) is often considered the most adventurous dub producer of the period. After working with King Tubby for a few years, he built his own studio, the Black Ark, which later burnt down (Perry maintains he burnt it down himself in a fit of paranoia). He also produced much of Bob Marley and the Wailer’s most famous works, like Exodus and African Herbsman. Augustus Pablo is well known for his use of the melodica and for his work with King Tubby on such classic albums as “King Tubby Meets the Rockers Uptown.” Other important producers of the era include Bunny Lee, Dennis Bovall, Prince Jammy, Keith Hudson, and Scientist.

Though its popularity continually waxes and wanes, Dub’s influence on contemporary music is incredibly vast and apparent, but often goes unacknowledged or unappreciated. For instance, the act of toasting, in which DJ’s talk and sing over a dub recording, set the groundwork for rap and hip-hop. Dub, and Jamaican music in general, was and is massively important in pop music originating out of England, influencing everything from the mod scene, punk rock groups (particularly the Clash), new-wave bands like Public Image, Ltd., the London electronica and rave scene of the 90’s, Tricky and trip-hop, and current styles like Dubstep. The music of English post-rock groups like Bark Psychosis, Disco Inferno, and SeeFeel demonstrates great debt to dub music. American avant-garde cellist Arthur Russell used dub techniques in recording many of his compositions.

See my dear friend Rory Nugent’s blog for a continuation of this annotated listening.

A new movie being made about the influence of dub on electronic music:

Songs to be downloaded from my flash drive:

Dub Fi Gwan-King Tubby-~1975
I Chase the Devil-Max Romeo/Lee Perry-1976
King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown-Augustus Pablo/King Tubby-1976
Noah Sugar Pan-Congos/Lee Perry-1977
Roast Fish & Cornbread-Lee Perry-1978
Careering-Public Image Ltd-1979
Justice Tonight/Kick it Over-The Clash-1980
Leaving Babylon-Bad Brains-1982
The Platform on the Ocean-Arthur Russell-1985
More Like Space-SeeFeel-1994
Absent Friend-Bark Psychosis-1994
Last Living Souls-Gorillaz-2006

The New Humans are a Brooklyn-based art collaborative between Howie Chen, Mika Tajima, and Eric Tsai. Disassociate is a six-week exhibition accompanied by an album release of the same name and two performances, one with Vitto Acconci and another with C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core). The exhibition is comprised of two rooms, a front room full of mobile panels covered with colorful silk screen printings of densely patterned circles and fake posters (Live in Mexico, 2025), and a back room housing an angled stack of Eames shell chairs, a pyramid of champagne glasses, and a large tapestry with “Warning: Not one more person allowed” repetitiously printed and over-printed from the top until illegible at the bottom. Speakers mounted in both rooms emit guitar drones and crackling static ala a vinyl record.

The press release states that the “duration exhibit points to the kinds of strategies and processes that can be used to create new articulations of form and sound through an antagonistic relationship to expectation, formalism, and style.” I must say that I didn’t feel anything very revolutionary about the installation, but I did feel that it was doing something interesting through coupling these partitions with the sound. The panels serve as sound buffers, so as you navigate through them you hear the drone and noise in different ways. The panels are intentionally mobile because they’re rearranged throughout the length of the installation and used during the performances. I like both the effect and the idea of the panels themselves, since they are both objects shaping the sound and significant pieces constituting the entire installation. The sound itself was not terribly interesting, though, and I think it would have been more interesting to have something more dynamic playing during the exhibition portion, though a non-static noise may have compromised the subtleties in how the mobile architecture shaped the sound. As for the back room, the drone seemed deeper–perhaps due to a bigger speaker. The back space felt disorienting as well, maybe an effect of the precariously stacked objects and overflowing tapestry in tandem with the heavy drone. Apparently, the live shows will be “extreme noise sets.” I’ll probably check out the second one, it’s this saturday.

  Though I didn’t get to spend too much time on location due to 13 degree weather, I loved Max Neuhaus’s installation in Times Square. It was around noon when I arrived at the triangular grate and the area abounded with the sound of car and foot traffic, so Neuheus’s piece was only audible when very near or upon the grate, and the effect of the drone was sudden and rich, producing an almost physically overwhelming presence.

The sound itself elicits a range of emotions. It’s somewhat ominous and brooding, reminding me of the drone during the close up of the yard ants in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (or his use of drones to portray the natural menace beneath the quotidian in all of his films). On the other hand, it almost sounds harmless, blending in with the array of other hums emitted from the unknown subterranean machines powering the city. But this doesn’t hold for long due to its overtones that are too harmonic to be mere happenstance. It produces a nice psychoacoustic effect as well, as I could “hear” the drone for about 5 minutes after leaving the grate and being well away from the actual sound.

The installation resoundingly altered how I perceived the space of Times Square, creating an almost supernatural “zone” right in the reified heart of American capitalism. It’s a strange contrast to stand above the grate and turn in a circle to take in all the vibrant ads and images while enveloped within this drone. And in this regard I think the installation succeeds on a levels beyond just altering space and perception in that it effectively produces an alternative space to the spectacle that is Times Square.

Here’s some videos of Neuhaus, one of which is about Times Square.

Outtakes from my Max/MSP noise generating patch:

 

 1: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 2: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 3 [0:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 4 [0:23m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 5 [0:19m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 6 [0:23m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 7 [0:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 8 [0:19m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 9 [0:29m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 10 [0:22m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I added three filters onto the modular synth patch I created last week, 1 homemade chorus, 1 homemade comb, and Max’s biquad object, and created a real sound behemoth. So much so that the patch crashes now whenever I try to turn on the audio. Last night, though, I was able to record 5 tracks that captured a good sampling of my patche’s sound generation potential.

Here’s a photo, synths are on top, filters on bottom (besides the filter subpatches and part of the bottom wave table, all is viewable):

 

 1 [0:28m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 2 [0:28m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 3 [0:51m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 4 [0:39m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Here’s a max patch I built:

Download Patch

I wanted to create something pseudo-modular, so it’s got all these groupings of oscillators, with various modulators or pairings, that I can patch together or store as a select grouping via the numbers in the lower left hand corner.

Here are the sounds I got out of it:

 

 1 [0:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 2 [0:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 3 [0:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 4 [0:22m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 5 [0:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 6 [0:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 7 [0:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 8 [0:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 9 [0:19m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 10 [0:42m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

ULTRAMEGAFUN!

For this assignment I traveled to Grand Central Station, and Coles Gym, and wandered a bit through the East Village. I discovered the aural beauty of the jackhammer, recorded perhaps the best excerpt from a random conversation I’ve ever heard, and learned to always bring a windscreen for your mic. I also really, really want one of these now.

My field recordings:

 

 thisisabrook [0:28m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Welcome [0:12m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 AttnCustomers: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Bathroom [0:15m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Click [0:44m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 HardCompositeMaterial [0:16m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 SubBitCrushModDel [0:22m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 TopOfStairsOutOfBreathTripled [0:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Close Listening: For this exercise, I couldn’t resist deeply listening to a treadmill upon which I was running at Coles. Initially, I had not planned incorporate my audio art assignment into my workout, but I found the drone of the machine in combination with internal rhythms (pulse, cracking joints) fascinating. The treadmill itself emitted a steady hum of machinic mids interspersed with high-pitched bleeps from pressed buttons. As my heart rate increased (eventually maxing out at 158), I could both hear and feel my pulse quicken and the contraction of veins and valves .

My aural ken spread out, and I began to listen to the room as a whole. Though each machine was functioning at a different rpm, the similarity in their sound caused their sounds to spill/merge into each other, creating a solid drone base. Upon this I heard the landing of other people’s feet, each in time with a rhythm determined by their individual physiology, I suppose, each foot landed in accordance to the size and musculature of of the body to which it’s attached. It all combined into an arhythmic phasing effect held together by the drones of the machines. It was a sonic space amazing in its texture and variation.

Far listening: For this entry I wanted to write about something I brought up up in class that provided possibly the most amazing listening experience I’ve had since moving to New York (especially in terms of distance): Phil Kline’s “Unsilent Night.”

It occurred mid-month of last December. I was sitting in the “living room” of our apt., and my roommates and I had the door open because it was fairly warm within. Slowly, this mass of sound started sipping in through the open window. It was difficult to make out at first, but it grew in intensity and began to take on a harmonious or musical quality. I climbed out on the fire escape, and saw a huge crowd of people coming down 4th street (where my apt is placed), and everyone was carrying a boombox. The sound became accompanied by the voices of the participants.

I rushed downstairs to get a closer look, and could finally make out what was occurring on the micro-level of this massive “orchestra.” It’s a minimalist drone type piece sprinkled with mallet percussion, and when compounded by the thousand or so boomboxes, all out of phase due to different positions of origin in the parade, the effect is very dense and, frankly, magical.

In terms of listening far, “Unsilent Night” provided the best distance based, urban listening experience I’ve ever had. I went up to our apt’s roof, and watched the parade proceed towards Thompson Square Park. As the parade walked away, the distance provided a synesthetic effect for the receding sound in that I felt like I could see the way the buildings and the layout of urban space molded the sound waves. I felt like I could see the waves rising up through the buildings, and then spread out over the skyline. I continued listening until it became so faint that it was overtaken the normal sonic occurrences of the East VIllage (yelling, screams, horns, loud bangs of unknown origin). I attempted to hold onto the sounds, but my aural grip eventually slipped. The way the music decreased was melancholic in that a gorgeous music event just steadily receded into nothingness. But all in all, an amazing sonic experience. And I wasn’t even on drugs!

And so is created my Audio Art sketchbook. I’ll be linking all my audio art experiments to my blog.

But for now, there is nothing.