30.3.23
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15.1.23
The Black Dog
The first time I encountered The Black Dog was upon visiting Mike who is now my brother-in-law. It was 1992 and I was a relatively solitary student at Glasgow University. Since schooldays I had followed music closely. Devoted to the music press I'd collected records since 1985 but, like many I'm sure, Acid House and Rave had at first proved difficult to assimilate and follow. My way in was through Dub Reggae and Kraftwerk. You went to raves, club nights and parties but you rarely had a handle on precisely what records were being played.
Mike, who at that stage was part of a collective called (I think) Wave, sometimes DJ'd the second room at Pure in Edinburgh. Mike is an incredibly charismatic, magnetic character. He has a proper reality distortion field around him. Many people recognised this in him or get sucked into it. For instance, I remember him visiting our house in London once and him wrapping my mother round his little finger. I recall her cooking him breakfast in the middle of the day. He is the kind of individual that you find at the edges of great culture. Like the luminous musicians who never get round to making more that one twelve inch, where that one twelve inch changes everything. Or those people who just create an atmosphere! It's often the most chimeric individuals who are responsible for a scene and the artists are just the worker bees.
Mike had unusually immaculate music taste. I remember my (now) wife Catherine had a cassette he had made her with Neu! on it - back when you literally never had the opportunity to hear their music. So I remember I visited Mike in this flat on Queen Margaret Drive where he was living - and he played me the first A.R.T. EP. He explained the eccentric international nexus of musicians of the post Detroit era - how Carl Craig was hob-nobbing with Dutch and British artists. He alluded to an earlier record by The Black Dog which he explained included a voice saying, "I sit in my room, Imagine the future." That record, which I came to learn was called The Virtual EP, was like recorded music could be in those days, extremely difficult to hear let alone lay your hands on.
FOPP Records on the Byres Road in Glasgow stocked a small selection of new dance music and a few weeks later I discovered The Parallel EP there. Parallel had a funny "Minimalist DANCE" sticker on the cover, and it struck me as a beautifully designed sleeve (props to Richie B). This was before any counter-dialogue about pretentiousness in Techno had sprung up; but the music inside was anything but that. The breakbeats make it an extremely visceral listen; it's powerfully propulsive dance music; got a real wiggle to it; but is simultaneously very opaque and mysterious. There's something about the chords they chose that sounded very acid-drenched, somehow alien. Some radical idea was lurking behind that sound. [We played a lot of Parallel when throwing raves in Senegal later in 1993, Mike particularly liked "Erb" and we had a shot in the final Echo documentary of a crab dancing to it.]
In July 1992 I was back in London for the Summer and this coincided with the release of WARP's "Artificial Intelligence" compilation. WARP's was a nifty bit of conceptual work which tied together lots of the thoughtful post-Detroit Techno music. By this stage I was already on board but really liked the record. Especially the inscrutable track by The Black Dog as one of their alter-egos, I.A.O.'s "The Clan" - something I still return to, its bashful, bruised, busy breakbeats ran counter to the Ambient orthodoxy; withholding its spine-tinglingly delightful four note refrain till the four minute mark. I went to the record's launch night at the Ministry of Sound where The Black Dog played behind a drape. I still have the promotional poster somewhere. I understand it has been reissued recently.
Visiting one of Mike's friends Lloyd in 1993 towards the end of my degree - Lloyd had a copy of Virtual and dubbed it onto a side of a C90 cassette for me. The other tracks were all in that vein of spacey Techno before it had been codified into Intelligent Techno things like Lil' Louis's prototypical "How I Feel", As One's "Your Hand in my Mind" and Nexus 21's remix of Paris Grey's "Don't Lead Me". I listened to the tracks on The Virtual EP pretty much on repeat for a whole year on headphones. I think The Black Dog had really tapped into something much more profound, truly an ur-current which I'm still excavating in my journeys in spirituality. It totally fascinated but also puzzled the hell out of me in the way that the great music is always a riddle.
Moving back to London in 1994 I started smoking a lot more marijuana. Mainly hashish in those days before hydroponic weed took off. I got a job as runner for Ridley Scott's production company and spent a lot of time wandering through Soho listening to music on a SONY Walkman as I made deliveries and collections. I would occasionally find rare early Black Dog records in Soho's record shops. Vir2l (top), the radically remixed versions of Virtual I found at Reckless Records on Berwick Street. Vanttool (middle) somewhere else. The Black Dog Productions "Flux/Otaku" record (bottom) was new from Fat Cat Records in Covent Garden.
Fat Cat was the home of this music in London and grew from a tiny room in the basement when I first would visit to a much bigger shop upstairs where you would bump into people like Bjork and where the walls were covered with the latest releases on Planet E and Plus 8. Atypic's "Otaku" is something I remember particularly from this era. Playing it at maximum volume in the summer at the weekend, high, with the windows wide open, I had a view across the skyline of Battersea.
Working as I was at Ridley Scott's I would daily be summoned to his secretary Julie's office to perform tasks like picking up cigars from Old Compton Street. Once buying a copy of the soundtrack for "Zorba the Greek" for the great man at the now vanished soundtrack record shop on Dean Street. His Bladerunner movie had particular currency at that time. Justin, my fellow runner, had been given the job of tidying the cage in the basement where everything was stored and together we looked at Ridley's beautiful hand-drawn storyboards for that movie.
[Click on these images to enlarge them]
Going about my daily chores I was also simultaneously drawing comics, printing them on the RSA Films photocopier and leaving them in record shops in Soho - chiefly Ambient Soho. This was at the foot of Berwick Street and was run by a guy called Rocket. One of my most carefully crafted comics was Black Dog Story (above) which told the story of my engagement with their early singles.
Imagine my surprise when one day there were two Black Dog CDs on Julie's desk. As I later discovered Ken's new manager Keir, who was a slick networking type, had sent "Bytes" and their latest "Spanners" through to the RSA office. "Bytes" I knew and loved for tracks like "Merck". Julie, who didn't know what to do with them, gave the discs to me and I reached out to Keir sending him the Black Dog Comic I had made.
At the same time the combination of very draining work with the production company (very long hours - lots of shoots on location - often travelling abroad) and quite a heavy consumption of hashish were taking their toll on me. I asked for a holiday in March 1996 and travelled to Hurghada in Egypt on my own thinking I would learn to scuba dive. It was like a building site. Among my strongest memories was of "Spanners" which I listened to on repeat - sometimes at night wandering around in the desert outside the town. "Spanners" really sunk in very deeply. Especially "Psil-cosyin" which had a strong middle-eastern flavour which somehow felt more authentic than just exotica and was a fitting soundtrack to the Valley of the Kings when I travelled further south. When I got back to London, pretty much in free-fall, I resigned from my job.
Ken didn't disappoint. Then aged 25, I'd already been around some interesting people by this stage of my life, not least by being exposed to extreme characters (masters and boys) at Eton College, but Ken was coming from somewhere else entirely. He alluded to his time working as a radar operator in the Navy (all very top secret), talked about the Crowleyan magic he was into, and the nascent internet of message boards they were a significant presence in. We smoked a lot of hashish together and listened to a lot of music. On that first visit, as I was leaving, Ken disappeared into another room and re-emerged with a copies of the "Virtual EP" and the "Techno Playtime EP" for me. I remember Ken's wife Sheena asking if he was sure he wanted to give them to me. I cherish these copies to this day.
And then for a few months we saw one another pretty regularly. Smoking. Listening to music. We went to a strange expo which his friend Jimmy Cauty of the KLF had invited Ken to. Jimmy had a tank with this sonic weapon. That was a far-out scene. I remember one evening we went together to see A Guy Called Gerald DJ-ing at a unusual space in Smithfield market. Ken set up a recording session in my basement with a bass-player called James and I ran projections of Super-8 film I had shot in Egypt. Having dinner at a Chinese restaurant I remember Ken started talking about the three of us as being the second incarnation of the group - we were all "air signs" apparently. I suppose he was imagining me as the AV component, they had after all just released a kind of conceptual soundtrack. I also remember supplying a bunch of records for Ken to sample for a Lalo Schiffrin remix that his manager Keir had arranged - I think Ken had written the project off as a bad idea (he was probably right) before I produced some others of the soundtrack composer's stuff. Ken particularly dug a funk cassette I made him.
However, at this point everything really started catching up with me. I had left RSA Films pretty much under a black cloud and had burnt my bridges back to that business quite effectively. I was not really looking after myself as young people are wont, and was smoking a lot of pot. Possibly one of the last times I saw Ken I remember him explaining to me how flying saucers travelled through inner space, and, if I remember rightly, talking about his past-life experiences. These are ideas I'm thoroughly au fait with now after years of reading Jung and studying Eastern Philosophy. But then I remember being thoroughly confused. Maybe even shocked! I was way out of my depth.
I think this experience of dislocation I felt is akin to what a lot of people who have had reasonably conventional Western upbringings undergo when, through the internet, they come across non-western ideas often wrapped up in cults and conspiracy theories. They have no barriers when it comes to processing and assimilating these concepts - no context within which to understand them. They are overpowered. Nowadays, as you can guess, I would have taken it in my stride. But at this point, across a wide front I was losing touch with reality, and I needed to step back from the whole thing. In fact, October 18th 1996 was the last time I ever touched marijuana. Ken and I have remained in touch over the years - he's a beautiful dude, a bonafide original.
It's funny to look back on those days which are nearly thirty years ago. In a significant respect I'm pleased that my preoccupations are, if matured, very similar. My pal Luke Davis has a riff about the importance of being able to confront your teenage self with confidence, having kept faith with those youthful ideals. What will always remain with me is an intense affection for the music Ken, Ed, and Andy made between 1989 and 1996. It's really very unique, profoundly affecting, and eternal.
24.12.22
2.12.22
The "S" Word
[Click image above for gallery view]
This very geeky book about the covert strand of spirituality in alternative music is now ready for ordering.
Under half of it is comprised of articles once posted here but no longer available online: Eastern Philosophy and The Cosmic Sound, Psychic Pop Relics (which has been extensively rewritten), Dub, His Tender Heart (on Neil Young), and Hip Priest (on Mark E. Smith). I've added my article on Chris Blackwell too because it works well here.
Over half of the book is made up of totally new material. There's a literally massive 18,000 word piece on what is called New Age, but really covers a whole range of New Age, Ambient, Minimalist, Avant-garde, Drone and Eastern musics. This is built around a survey of 50 albums. Unmissable! A book in in itself really. Then there's a piece on Prince in the same vein as my viral-hit on The Fall. There's a chapter on Roedelius (of Cluster and Harmonia fame) which includes an interview with the great man himself. Finally, there's a thing on my Tibetan LPs. By the time you've finished it you will be a new person or your money back (Terms and conditions apply).
I've got five amazing endorsements from the big people:
“Intensely researched, latticed with surprising connections and correspondences, these essays expand and deepen our awareness of the links between music and the numinous. The S-Word is an illuminating book about illumination.”Simon Reynolds,author of Energy Flash and Rip It Up and Start Again“You'd nearly mistake it for an uncomfortable topic instead of an invisible one, but Matthew's book confronts it head on: even in the hands of secular musicians who strip their practice down to pure aesthetics, what we're responding to in so much of all of this new music is devotional. Or it could be, if you're interested in listening.”Jon Leidecker,Wobbly“Discussing the spiritual connections and interpretations of music can be something daunting for both readers and writers — where does one stop and one end? The collection of pieces that make up ‘The ‘S’ Word’ show that Matthew Ingram can balance his own particular perspective and experiences with wider considerations of what the spiritual can mean, casting new, unexpected light on deeper areas and suggesting paths of further exploration for the curious.”Ned Raggett,AllMusic
"...an amazing book..."Erik Davis,author of Techgnosis and High Weirdness
"What an amazing overview. You covered it all! I will definitely reccomend to everyone."Ramón Sender,co-founder of the San Francisco Tape Music Center
It is available as an eBook globally here and is for sale as a paperback book in the UK only too. The price reflects the fact that it is 260 pages long and has cover-to-cover colour photography so is reasonably costly to print.
It's one copy only each. Send one of the following to my Paypal account: alias@hollowearth.org
Standard Delivery: (£25 + £3.35) = £28.35
Recorded Delivery: (£25 + £4.45) = £29.45
Copies will be signed. And include your address!
SMALL NUMBER OF COPIES NOW AVAILABLE (10.1.23) SOLD OUT
TLDR:- music geeks only
- ebook available globally. [NB You don't need a Kindle only the free app]- Paperback only available in the UK.
- One copy per person.
- Costly to produce.- Delivery will not be instantaneous be quite quick.
2.10.22
TPM
Presenting my latest piece of work the comic book "TPM".
This is an eighty-page long "graphic novel" which tells the story of one Dennis Overton who finds himself drawn into the shadowy world of psychic marketing.
I first had the idea in April 2018 when I went to interview Stan Grof in Basel. Grof has a fascinating conviction in the reality of the psychic experience; to the degree that one starts to ponder whether certain things might be possible. In my working notes TPM stood for "Transpersonal Marketing", "Transpersonal" being the Grof-ian buzzword, but it morphed into the name of the agency itself with only echoes of this original meaning remaining. I suppose this is akin to how the acronym KLF always meant a number of different things: Kopyright Liberation Front, Kings of Low Frequency, Kevin Likes Fruit, etcetera.
The comic was also inspired by the research that I did after finishing "Retreat" around the areas where New Age thinking collided with business - that fascinating nexus of self-help, therapy and marketing. If you're interested in a full reading list look at Myers' bookshelves in the comic - it's all there. EST, Werner Erhard's cult, was obviously of interest here; but also the British therapy cult Exegesis run by Robert D'Aubigny which, remarkably enough, I came within a whisker of getting involved with in the late eighties, aged 18.
My nanny had been involved with the group, then trading as Programmes Ltd, and had told me that she thought she could get me work with the record producer Tony Visconti who allegedly had connections with them. I remember visiting Visconti's studio at the time and marvelling at a tiny transistor radio perched on the mixing desk through which they would test the music. I spent a week waiting around at said nanny's house for the call to come (classic cult strategy apparently), visiting Exegesis' HQ in the mornings where they would do a "Positive Telephony" dance before starting the day's telemarketing.
And obviously there's a healthy dose of insights from my twenty years working at the coalface of advertising. Any similarity to persons living or deceased is purely coincidental...
Writing and drawing a comic book as large as this is no mean undertaking. To start off one has to block out the entire script in boxes. Then there's the character design; I needed all the characters to look very different so as to make the complex story as clear as possible. I started by only being able to execute one page of eight frames a day. I thought this was slow, but I found out recently that comics legend Alex Ross works at a speed of ten pages a month. Eventually I got this up to two pages a day. It was difficult putting aside clear days to dedicate to the process and in total the whole production took two years.
The comic's biggest formal innovation is the absence of speech bubbles - this is something of a feat as, you will notice, apart from a few place and time cues, the book is 100% dialogue. That's what comics are innit.
There is a digital copy available for immediate download at Amazon. This was built in Kindle Comic Creator and works very well. You can see a preview there too.
There is also a small first edition print run. Signed naturally! I've had very favourable feedback from everyone who has seen the comic, it's funny and full of surprises, so I hope that you will buy one.
Send money to Paypal address alias@hollowearth.org. Prices for one copy as follows:
UK
Standard: £13.61
Tracked: £18.79
EU
Standard: £16.30
Tracked: £21.17
USA
Standard: £19.46
Tracked: £23.91
Very limited copies remaining. SOLD OUT OCTOBER 2022.
24.1.22
Dub
I can’t think of a music which has meant so much to me for such a long time; where its significance has deepened over the years to the extent that I appreciate it more than ever before.
My first experience of dub was as a voracious alternative music fan, a seventeen year-old, in 1988. The Melody Maker was full of neo-psychedelic groups such as AR Kane and Loop talking about mythic outsider music by the likes of Sun Ra and King Tubby. My first Dub LP was Augustus Pablo’s “Original Rockers” which I bought in Notting Hill one sunny Saturday. In that first flush of romance with marijuana, that night my friends and I listened to it over and over again. To this day it's still a favourite of mine. At that point in time the record was a positively ancient nine years old – which thirty-four years later seems faintly comedic. Sounding like “old fart at play” no doubt... Wistfully reminiscing about the times of his carefree youth. Sighs.
My dub chart printed in The Wire in August 1992.
Dub acquired increasing significance throughout the nineties. As a touchstone for hardcore and jungle, for spliffed-out techno and trip-hop, for glitch even. It’s a well-covered story which music fans are very familiar with. But rather than forgetting about the music I doubled down (dubbled down?) in the Noughties and Teenies. This was stoked by the sheer pleasure it continued to give me along with a gnawing sense of the music's cosmic importance.
Two essential theoretical books on dub.
Dub's meaning would have been implicitly apparent to its original makers and audience. Although I have only read a mere fraction of the masses of literature on the topic, even the most promising avenues I've come across, authors Michael Veal's great Dub Soundscapes and Christopher Partridges's brilliant Dub In Babylon don't quite articulate what I think is the music’s real meaning in a way that outsiders like myself can understand it.
Emperor Haille Selassie I.
I had never grasped the significance of the Rasta phrase “I-and-I”, and to be honest until I had done the research for “Retreat,” even if you would have explained it to me I would not have understood it. Listen to this (quoted in Professor Christopher Partridge’s “Dub in Babylon” (2010)) from Jack Johnson-Hill’s “I-Sight: The World of Rastafari: An Interpretive Sociological Account of Rastafarian Ethics”(1995): “…in the first instance [I-and-I] connotes a sense in which the self [ed. meaning here “the ego” or individual’s consciousness] is believed to be inextricably linked with the symbols of divine agency such as Selassie-I, Rastafari, God or “Jah”. For example, the “I” of the self is fundamentally related to the “I” in Selassie-I.” He goes on, “by referring to oneself in the first person singular as I-n-I, there is a virtual equation between oneself and God.” Or to slightly rephrase this, the individual's consciousness is part of the god consciousness.
A sadhu in Varanasi with dreadlocks.
These days I am familiar with the Hindu Vedic philosophy of the Upanishads, which holds that “Atman” (the individual’s localised consciousness) is contiguous with “Brahman” (the sum total of all consciousness) just as the air in a topless bottle is contiguous with the atmosphere. Rastafarianism, therefore, comes to a similar philosophical conclusion as Hinduism.To the Rastas their “I-ness” is an emanation contiguous with that of Selassie the Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Juddah, elect of God and light of the world. In the Hindu religion the emanation of divinities like Shiva and Vishnu is felt by their followers as though they were prisms capturing that divine light.
An Indian Sadhu smoking a chillum.
In Hinduism sound is understood to be able to traverse the entire spectrum of emanation from “gross” - meaning physical or incorporated, to the most “subtle”, meaning etheric or immaterial. Sound can be heard like thunder which shakes the foundations (like dub shakes our rib cage); but it can also be heard in our minds; for instance we can talk to ourselves and hear a voice. It’s arguable that sound can be yet more subtle than audible in our mind – it can even have a presence which is inaudible, immanent, so to speak – though then we can only imagine it in its absence.
The Hindu Deity Shiva.
With the mantra in Hinduism, a syllable “Ram” or the something like the Shaivite mantra “Om Namah Shivaya” it can be recited as japa (muttering) in forms ranging from the gross to the subtle, from vaachick (aloud), upanshu (tongue moving) to mansik (silent). This silent recitation (like for instance as practiced in Transcendental Meditation) being the most powerful. Mahesh Maharishi Yogi promised that through the practice of the mantra in TM “the conscious mind fathoms the deeper levels of the thought process and eventually transcends the subtlest thought to arrive at the state of Being. The conscious mind reaches transcendental Being and becomes acquainted with that state.” This he explained was because, “When one speaks within oneself and the mind hears the sound, it is because the mind associates itself with the subtle level of the sense of hearing. When during the process of Transcendental Meditation the mind perceives very refined states of thought, it is due to the mind’s associating itself with the very subtle states of the sense of hearing. Thus we find that during meditation the finest ability of the sense of perception is put to use, whereas ordinarily in our daily life we continue to use only the gross levels of the senses.” No matter what your thoughts are on Mahesh he articulates this idea beautifully.
Mahesh Maharishi Yogi
In Guy Beck’s weighty academic text “Sonic Theology: Hinduism and Sacred Sound” (1993) he quotes Govinda Gopal Mukhopadhyana describing the hierarchy immanent in the sonic continuum between the concrete emanation and the molten (or dematerialised), “The masters explain that the original nature of the mantra is Nada, which you call the flowing sound which had become congealed or concretized in the so-called letters of the alphabet. Now we generally go on repeating or pronouncing these letters. This is called japa; but the main purpose of japa – continued repetition or muttering, whatever you may call it – is to kindle or arouse the fire in which the Tantras is called kundalini. And, as these hard or concretized letters begin to melt, the aspirant or sadhaka begins to hear the Nada. The words melt, leaving only a continuous flow of sound in the consciousness or experience of the aspirant.” Eventually the flowing sound Nada, “goes on interrupted till it reaches its source or point of origin (Bindu).”
If we can understand the idea that sound has properties which extend from its ability to exist as a concrete force in the world, to a presence only audible in one's consciousness and then eventually to a metaphysical, inaudible presence - we are well on the way to understanding how Dub works. Just as the mantra can be audible and silent, with Dub Reggae we understand that what was once present can become inaudible. The musical parts, bass, drums, horns, voices always exist but as the writer David Toop once commented, in a passage which scratched the surface of the idea, as though they were actors on a stage taking it in terms to come in front of the curtain.
The Paragons: On the Beach
Right from its very inception this idea of inaudibility, of a sound being absent because it hovered at a metaphysical level only appreciable in the imagination of the listener, was apparent. Rudolph “Ruddy” Redwood, wealthy entrepreneur and sound system owner described what happened to Steve Barrow when he played out a dubplate of The Paragons “On The Beach” (1967) which he had encouraged to be cut without vocals: “I put on “On The Beach” and I said “I’m gonna turn this place into a studio”, and I switch over from the singing part to the version part, cut down the sound and, man, you could hear the dance floor rail, man – everybody was singing.” The whole crowd reaches to fill the gap in the music – they hear the Paragons’ voices in their collective mind and themselves project it forth in song.
It’s a phenonemon which perceptive commentators often remark upon. Here for instance is author Jim Dooley from his review of “Macca Rootsman Dub” in the invaluable “The Small Axe Guide to Dub” (2010): “On some of the songs, it is almost impossible not to hear [Gregory Isaacs’] distinct voice in your mind even when he is absent.”
While it’s perhaps most exciting to hear voices disappear; horn parts or guitar, bass or drums, the impact is the same. Where once something was audible it melts away in a reverberating mirage – not gone, but flickering between ours and a higher transcendental strata of existence. I can’t get enough of it! For me it’s like a signpost to nirvana – the very fact that the technique is so enchanting in practice seems to fundamentally endorse as true this emanationist understanding of reality.
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In the spirit of sharing I’ve made a mix, the sequel to Woebot in Dub v2. Here's a little breakdown of its contents.
Woebot in Dub v3
The Upsetters: Iron Wolf
A version of Bunny and Ricky’s “Freedom Fighter”, itself a hypnotic take on Junior Byles “Beat Down Babylon.”
The Mighty Two: Earthquake
This version of Lizzard’s “Fight I down” is a spectacular opportunity for Errol Thompson to add some ghostly muted synth effects. Usually synth overdubs ruin dub, for instance check Joe Gibbs’ lamentable Almighty Dub Chapter 4 – but not here. Whilst the original track is slender – the dub, as sometimes in the most skillful hands a better track is found within the architecture of a weaker one, takes this slenderness and makes its opacity fascinatingly translucent.
King Tubby Meets The Skatalites: Middle East Dub
Not sure how I lived all those years without discovering The Skatalites in Dub, or “Herb Dub-Collie Dub” as it is sometimes known. I’m sure I was dissuaded by investigating because, legendary as they are, The Skatalites were the old-time ska band who peaked in 1965 and I’ll take ska only in small doses. But by the time of this release in 1976 they had moved with the times and were making exquisite, jazzy roots instrumentals. Tubby doubtless was honoured to find himself remixing, was at his best, and the resulting LP is a masterpiece from start to finish. With more texture and instrumental variety, and frankly sheer prowess in the hands of these top-flight players, this is a quixotic, dreamy LP heavy on the Niyabinghi drumming.
Jah Stitch/Horace Andy: Greedy Girl Dub
Sheer magic. Driven by the grumpiest, most insistent bassline ever. Stitch and Andy weaving in and out like duppies. Goosebumps when Stitch whispers “The taller the trees ah the cooler the breeze” as though he were the wind itself...
Tappa Zukie/Horace Andy: Rub a Dub A Weh Them Want
No vocals on this cut, but a minimalism worthy of Steve Reich. The A-side “Natty Dread A Weh She Want” produced by Tappa Zukie was a massive dancehall hit in 1979 in which Tappa popularised his “Yagga yagga yagga ya” chant. At 6 minutes 44 it seems to go on forever but one wishes it would never end.
Leroy Smart: No Love Version
Leroy Smart has such a great voice – tough, no nonsense, ultra-real. I’ve always loved his “God Helps the Man”. Lovely hearing him atop this pneumatic bassline a version of his “No Love”.
Mighty Diamonds: Merciful Dub
From “Vital Dub”, King Tubby’s mix of Bunny Lee’s riddim, a version of The Mighty Diamonds “Have Mercy” from their “Right Time” LP. Lulu and I went to see the Mighty Diamonds a few years back, with support from Max Romeo, Big Youth and Little Roy and they never showed up because Tabby (or was it Bunny?) failed to fill out his visa in time. Too bad. It might be that Bunny Lee’s riddims are the best material for Tubby’s studio to work with. I think there’s probably a higher hit rate with that combo than any other.
Yabby You: Creations and Versions
From the epic King Tubby’s Prophesy of Dub LP. I’ve been listening to a great deal of Yabby You – I even bought a wonderful Yabby You cut-out from Pressure Sounds which is on my mantlepiece. Top accessorising.
Niney the Observer: Rich and Poor Dub
The dub boom saw a lot of otherwise very limited recordings reaching a wider audience. This track is from Niney's “Sledgehammer Dub LP”. Another good example is the reissue of Errol Brown’s “Orthodox Dub” which is definitely worth hearing. The solo sounds like I dunno what, a grungy clavinet fed through a Leslie speaker? Bewitching.
Skin, Flesh & Bones: Spider Man Web
From the Fighting Dub LP. Another recent reissue and a tip-off from Jim Dooley’s excellent “Small Axe Guide to Dub” book. A lean, clean machine.
Yabby You: Prophets
Top cut from the excellent Beware LP. One I’ve had for many years but have returned to with gusto. One of the nice surprises of cataloguing all my records into Discogs mid-shutdown last February was discovering that my copy of this is fantastically valuable. It’s Yabby You all day long round here I can tell you.
Scientist: Straight Left
From “Heavyweight Dub Champion”, a version of Barrington Levy’s “You Come To Ask What Love Is”. It’s an LP I remember I got given it by legendary TV advertising director Steve Lowe when he gave me his records back in 1994. The tiny synth-spring ear worms are what takes this to the next level. It’s all in the detail.
Gotta admit I find the decision to reconfigure all of the classic Scientist LP covers to feature the names of producer Henry “Junjo” Lawes (and singer Linval Thompson's) as a mistake. Mainly because the Scientist sleeves, for Showdown, Rids the world of the Evil Curse of the Vampires, Meets the Space Invaders, Encounters Pacman, and Wins the World Cup are such icons. Is nothing sacred? Lol.
The use of cartoons on dub LP covers is also tightly woven into this spiritual dialogue. Let us not forget Tony Wright’s beautiful illustration for the cover of Super Ape and Lloyd Robinson's cover of The Return of Super Ape. This is comic art as emanation. From William Blake, to Crumb, and Moebius the best comics have always had a psychic quality. This is why the genre has a natural affinity with the superhero genre in which super powers (siddhis as the Hindus call them) from higher levels are bestowed upon mankind. I’ve always been taken with how in X-men Stan Lee and the devoutly religious Jack Kirby had Professor X, Charles Xavier’s backstory set against a scuffle in the Himalayas when he was crippled by one “Lucifer”. The Hindu Cosmology itself like a gigantic comic book, right back to the illustrated tales of the Ramayana. The iconic and archetypal imagery of comics fits Dub’s album covers like a glove.
Prince Douglas: Tongue Shall Tell Dub
Horace Andy again with a version of his end-of-days recounting Studio One classic “Every Tongue Shall Tell” here on the Wackies label. Swaggering.
Revolutionaries: The Flood of Dub
Version of Gregory Isaacs’ “Happiness Come” by producer Ernest Ranglin. Traces of Gregory swirling up there somewhere in the stratosphere. Great bassline in the spotlight.
Prince Jammy: Chapter of Money
From the excellent Blood and Fire compilation “Dub Like Dirt” – absolutely engulfed with echo.
Horace Andy: Government Dub
“In the Light” (1977) isn't a bad LP - but the many of the dubs on “In the Light Dub” take it to another level.
Keith Hudson: Formula Dub
After his cult classic “Pick a Dub” (1974) (the subject of JA controversy as it was commissioned by Junior Walker and allegedly released against his wishes) Hudson nearly blew it on the “Too Expensive” (1976) record, his jive bid for punk-era commercial success on Virgin. A familiar case of misreading your audience. Getting his feel for the international market he back-pedaled furiously with the bleak and mysterious “Brand” (1977) and “Rasta Communication” (1978) before he really struck out with the almost avant-garde “Playing It Cool” in 1981. It's a Dub LP Jim, but not as we know it.
Resources:
Top 125 Dub Albums (According to RYM's Heavy Dub Heads)
Motion Records Supremo James Dutton's Dub Albums List
Interview with Snoopy
Snoopy's best Dub Albums List
Steve Barrow's 21 Dub Salute Chart
Classic David Toop Dub Article at Test Pressing
Special thanks to Jim Dooley and Chris Partridge.
In memory of Lee and Robbie.
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