RFI : Dub metal

Also, you might want to read this, by ILM person Frank Kogan:

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0252/kogan.php

Also:

1. Aren't you like "gone" from here, jess? Don't you have "better things to do?"

2. If I'm "not getting it," why don't you help me out then, champ? I mean, why do you write about music anyway?

2. money.

Clothes have nothing to do with it for me, but maybe it does for you, I dunno.

I own the album.

the end of it is noisy metallic feedback squallor... isn't it?

I may be "stupid" but I wouldn't call Hendrix metal, either. Certainly a "starting point" or a "seminal influence" on metal, but not metal.

Re: the Slayer comment - that's just ridiculous. If I was more into the idea of taking your worthless flame bait, I'd just say "fuck you." Not much point in that, but hey you're the "author," so maybe dialogues aren't exactly what you're looking for.

Okay, so I think we agree in a way, just differ in that Chambers Brothers/Hendrix/Yardbirds/Prunes seem proto-metal to me, as opposed to Led Zep/Black Sab/etc. as metal. I dunno if I can explain it just yet, and I know je ne sais quoi is a cop-out, so gimme some time and I'll see what I come up with.

what about Painkiller?? zorn, laswell and harris. there are the definite dub moments

my answer to question 2 stands for both parts.

your lack of...actually i don't even know what it is...wit?, suspension of disbelief?, fantasy?, fancy?, ability to step outside of literalist/fact-checker self-parody?...is depressing to say the least.

Besides, can't we discuss more important things, like what the implications are of Shania Twain wearing a Ramones t-shirt?

so what's the difference between indie-dub and dub metal? (aside from y'know, the way the songs are written/sound.)

i always thought of "jennifer" as canterbury dub.

(haha hstencil - re. the post between my last one and this one - i think i do a good enough job pointing out my own stupidity ("not getting it") in my writing - consciously or not - for everyone.)

Indie-dub? Dub metal? No idea. What's indie-dub, anyway? Like, uh, Jan Jelinek or something? Seriously, I have no idea.

The Canterbury dub thing is funny 'cause I was going to make a joke upthread (but never got around to it) that "Jennifer" is progressive dub.

I'm still iffy on the concept of dub itself. So, like, all echo-effects are "dub"? Why do they get first dibs and not, I dunno, Joe Meek or somebody? Did they invent the equipment or something? I used dub-metal in my Good Charlotte review mainly because I'm except Chuck's def. to describe what GC lifted from Lep (and how!) but I'm still a little iffy on it.

Iffy is the word of the day, btw.

because I'm except Chuck's def. to describe what GC lifted from Lep (and how!) but I'm still a little iffy on it.

One thing I'm unclear with is how these dub metal progenitors might have influenced the dub side of the equation, as opposed to the metal side. I mean, hey we know Led Zep might have heard Yardbirds et al (esp. as Page was their guitarist!), but did Lee Perry ever hear the Chambers Brothers?

hstencil, this is the first rule of chuck club: associations will be based not on actual history, but sonic similarity.

Which is part of what I love about it, since what we hear is a lot more important purchase-wise than when things happened. Hence, Chambers Brothers is metal if it SOUNDS like metal.

Ugh. Guess this is one club I'll never be in.

Why wouldn't it be? It could be particularly crap bop in the mind's eye.

It wouldn't be because I think of bop in historical terms, i.e. what like 1947-1959 or so?

Yes, but consider all the threads on what 'punk' is. Was it framed in a time or not?

I guess I just couldn't understand why hstencil laughs at the guy (out of nowhere) adding nothing to the conversation. Then berates jess and chuck for not fully explaining themselves and says maybe dialogues aren't exactly what you're looking for.

I mean, if a dialogue is what you want, "hahahahhahahahahahaahhA" isn't exactly the most graceful opening line.

calm down, T. i find it funny too.
i think its pretty obv. that 'soul funk vocal group' the Chambers Brothers are not exactly metal. it really doesn't need much explaination. or maybe it does if you're dense?

I don't see why all the rest of you are SO FUCKING IMPORTANT that you can't act much WORSE (in terms of courtesy) than I did, yet still be taken SERIOUSLY. WTF?!? A vast lot of ILM "people" are far more disrespectful towards others than I was towards Chuck, but are less likely to

1. ever admit to it
2. do anything but come to a knee-jerk defense towards someone (like Chuck) WHO CAN VERY WELL DEFEND THEMSELVES IF THEY WANT TO, THANK YOU VERY FUCKING MUCH!!!

P.S. I love JasonD.

I was thinking the same thing. Not dub, exactly, but hey. It's what I'd like dub metal to sound like. (i.e. not like Painkiller)

Just out of curiosity, Chuck, would you consider any of the following to be Dub-Metal:

1. Pil (1st 3 albums, esp. the live in Paris one)
2. Sonic Youth's Confusion is Sex period
3. The first side of Can's Tago Mago LP
4. Prince's Black Album
5. Early Gang of Four
6. Pere Ubu's Datapanik EP
7. Miles Davis' early '70s stuff

I'd say most of the above qualifies at least as much as early Funkadelic, but what do I know.

In other news, I have no idea what "pop-apologetic column" in the *Voice a couple months ago hstencil is referring to, at least in part because the pop music I like deserves no apology, but also because it's been over a year since I wrote any such column, as far as I remember. And I wonder what everybody thinks about Frank Kogan's dub-rock article I linked above. And I have no idea who Painkiller are.

I'll read the kogan article and try to give some sort of response.

i am still digesting frank's piece. (i read it on the bus yesterday, but haven't had time to think through why i like it, outside of the fact that it has those 5-10-15 killer sentences that stick in the mind like all his pieces do.)

mainly i was just trying to get back on topic

but i just remembered a true dub metal track. on the On-U Sound "Pay It All Back Vol2", there's a track with Lee "Scratch" Perry and Dub Syndicate called _Train to Doomsville" with a total metal fuzz guitar riff and freaked out Adrian Sherwood production.

ok, I just looked it up at the Earache site ... Mighty Force is who I was thinking of (awful name).

*- I just made "microprogcore" up just now. Who KNOWS what it means.

A bunch of German dudes on a bender in Prague drinking Budvar probably make this kind of music.

"Velitch Kras presents for your harsh enjoyment their latest album Skemmer, on the Radical Pain label. Listen to their laptop visions of the Bavarian folk symphonies of old on the remix single "Unglobheim," with creative reworkings by Sky Caravan, Das Bastards, and scur-skek."

the most famous dub-metal album ever just might be, um, the third Prodigy album

I guess the trick with this is, does dub have to be slow(er) to be called dub?

Okay, I'll shut up now.

ps: can anyone send me Chucks genre essay (something about granola?)I'll buy the book (again) soon Chuck, I promise, but i want to read that one NOW.

it was a real fave when it came out - think it was around 94/95

The Earache/techno band being referred to above is I think Ultraviolence.

Hmmm....am I alone in thinking that the Hellhammer demos and "Morbid Tales" were godlike and innovative, and everything else from Celtic Frost progressively less interesting artistically? "To Mega Therion" has some weak tracks but was still amazing, but "Into The Pandemonium" was extremely uneven and dips too much into experimentation for its own sake. I'm sorry to disagree, but "One In Their Pride" is a novelty "let's-fuck-around-in-the-studio" NASA sample collage with the most basic Dr. Avalanche drumtrack one can imagine - certainly something few metal bands did, but in what way is this metal musically or even related to Celtic Frost as a band? I'd imagine "dub metal" would be some musical fusion of dub and metal, not the case of a band that usually plays metal playing a dubby tune. If one of the blokes of Autechre picks up an acoustic guitar and plays a nice, traditional, textbook rendition of "Greensleeves", is that suddenly "IDM Folk"?

Ned, I haven't read the Tom Warrior book, partly because I just can't get over his dismissal of his earlier material in various interviews. I've heard it's a bit of an egotrip but very interesting, so I'm definitely interested.

History is not on his side anyway, I fear - while he might consider the violin-infested/operatic female vocals/male goth wailing music his greatest achievement, its legacy is largely that of gimmicky pathos (the occasional Yorkshire doom band notwithstanding). The nihilstic, deconstructivist tendencies of Hellhammer/"Morbid Tales" on the other hand have proved to be catalysts for far more far reaching innovations later on...

And I should also get mr. Chuck Eddy's book, so it seems. I'm very interested in the exact reasoning behind defining metal as, so it seems at first sight, any loud rock 'n roll (correct me if I'm wrong). I've come to see the history of metal as firstly a vague vision of "escaping from rock 'n roll", where the first practical steps were made by Sabbath and finally the realization of that vision, the severance of the last ties with rock, via various intertwined paths, around 1985. After that, a period of ten years racing into the unknown, and now, post-1995, a stagnant period of digesting that big leap and crossbreeding with other genres - perhaps the final stage in its development.

What I thought was that "The Onslaught" is also the title of the opening track of a Blues Traveller album which probably fits vaguely in the dub-metal category -- that track at least, and maybe the heavier stuff on the album generally.

Also that it's a real extension of the dub-concept which I sorta see, but of course his article is about "dub" in a broader sense than just rock. And I think the dub concept is abstracted from "dub" music per se. but rather takes a rather OVERT feature of that music (in its construction, which Kogan describes) and translates that madly, like the socalled hyperdub virus. Except hyperdub seems to have a tight rather than loose construction, like all this stuff closing in on itself.

And I think that, fr. mr. eddy's benifit (since I had an argument with him over the use of "tracky" v. "songful") that we can translate this category into technoetc. and get dub->tracky, non-dub (Kogan has no handy term for this)->songful.

Except that chuck was right that this isn't always the most INTERESTING description to make on its own, and what makes Kogan's article interesting is the notion of Recombinant Rock which historicizes a static descriptive concept and asks how bands meld their influences into a whole or scatter them about, which is a nice open way to encompass and approach a slew of bands.

The guitar solo on "Spirit In The Sky" is the most dub thing ever.

Echo does not equal dub.

And saying that anything (like the Chambers Bros. or Hendrix) that came *before* the developments of these genres is an example of the two genres fusing together is just... come on, that's ridiculous. It's a logical fallacy.

speaking of not "getting" "it":

In Recombinant Dub, you take out the 'lead' instrument—-the singer, the melody, the lead guitar. So your center is no longer necessarily occupied by sound.

???

Warrior's book came off as a bit over-selfeffacing -- kind of charming, insofar as he wants to attribute any of their success to various small triumphs of blind chance over adversity, but that whole schtick ages a bit & one gets the sense that underneath it lies the conviction that given the right people around him, his troo genius will flare up and be visible to all

someone who includes hendrix in metal is making a claim about hendrix and a claim about metal (like it "in fact developed as a genre earlier than it got its name" for example)

the adequate argumentative response to (let's say) "i don't consider anything to be dub that wasn't made before 1969" is "well i do" => since the interesting thing in either case has to be the substantive reason for the limits being claimed, rather than the digits making up the year

genre that isn't animated by argument and concomitant social mutation is basically a co-opted marketing device

well i'd agree except i'll take co-opted to mean "removed from the living genre" and "marketing device" to mean "and then used as an empty brand to sell things" except that people don't buy empty brands only brands which resonate with them so a genre which can be used to market is one which IS still animated by argument, mainly I think.

a genre which is "dead" is a novelty.

I like what he's getting at generally, but have a pretty hard time trying to follow his examples without having heard any of 'em. Maybe the Voice should start posting sound samples along with its music pieces.

Metal=bad pot + cheap beer + LOUD guitars + creative use of recording studio space

Dub-Meal=potent pot + cheap beer + heavy guitar + LOUD bass + creative use of recording studio space

Except, of course, when it doesn't.

(Tracer also sort of hurt my head too: I could be way off but it seems to me like most dub bass lines stop mid-bar -- and then sort of tickle themselves back up to the one-beat.)

(I haven't looked over any of the pieces referenced but that big-space / empty-center description of dub seem really intuitively correct to me as a definition of what "dub" as a broad approach -- and not an historical genre -- can mean.)

a) what a fuck-tabulous song!!

b) i whole heartedly think i agree that it is dub metal. in the same sense that in a gadda da vida could be considered (proto)metal

What does RFI stand for?

seriously.

And I wrote about some very recent dub-metal here, by the way:

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0414/eddy.php

and here:

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0424/eddy1.php

and here:

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0415/eddy.php

Queen, "Get Down Make Love"

it know it couldn't be more obvious but DUB TRIO DUB TRIO DUB TRIO

Leviathan "Massive conspiracy against all life"

Chrome "Third from the sun" and just about anything afterwards . .

I'm really enjoying this new dubstep album by Distance, Repercussions. The track "Koncrete" in particular uses thrash metal irregular rhythms and grinding textures, but it's aired out over a slower beat.

Bunkur.

It's weird to read the debates upthread, from days of old. Like how people in the 70s thought metal was some totally different thing, and then the total deathless tenacity of the concept. Which is very metal (deathlessness), so fair enough. But definitely weird.

And also, speaking of Leviathan, Lurker of Chalice.

Ambient/depressive BM kind of parallels dub already in its use of degraded recording and tons of reverb. Wrest seems to be making the link explicit,

Here's the Distance track

Nina Hagen also does this some on her Unbehagen EP from 1979 (and probably elsewhere), though mostly she seems to keep her dub and metal in separate songs. (Also, as far as I can tell, the word "African" in the title of her song "African Reggae" pretty much translates as "German".)

Some early Therapy? stuff I'd argue fits into the Dub Metal category.

As Jordan said above, DUB TRIO !!! Wow, what a band.

i may be high, but parts of dude's Black Shabbis may qualify here somewhat.

here's all i could find via u-tube:

Nazareth, "You Love Another" (on 2XS, 1982).

Would definitely place Basement 5's confusingly titled only album 1965 - 1980 (Antilles, 1981) in this genre, by the way. Sounds like Killing Joke's debut LP gone dub, basically -- which makes sense, given that the drummer used to be in Public Image Ltd. and the guitar player was a reggae guy, and dreadlocks were involved. Martin Hannett produced.

Live version of "Suffice To Say" (only live cut on LP, only cut recorded by Vic Maile and produced by the band, not Richard Gottehrer) on Yachts' 1979 debut S.O.S. fits here -- especially the section in the middle when they get all Iron Butterfly. (Apparently "Suffice To Say" was their first single on Stiff -- didn't know that until today. Not sure I've ever heard the original studio mix, which came out September 1977; the live version on the album was recorded late 1978.)

Nina Hagen also does this some on her Unbehagen EP

Spliff, Hagen's German backing band at the time, also mix some Police-type reggae with some metallic guitars on their awesomely catchy 1982 85555 LP (released as Emergency Exit under different cover art in the States), but I'm not sure they ever get into dub territory, per se'.

Actually thinking that "Humor Me," the last cut on Pere Ubu's The Modern Dance, might fit this genre more than anything on Dub Housing -- seems consciously reggae-influenced, too, especially given David Thomas's "it's just a joke, mon" fake Jamaican patois.

Wait, what? Patois? I don't hear that at all!

Thinking Rare Earth's 10-minute 1970 version of the Temptations' "(I Know) I'm Losing You" fits here, too, almost the same way the Chambers Bros' "Time Has Come Today" does (not in as extreme a way, but getting there.)

"Soul Experience" and "Real Fright," both from Iron Butterfly's third LP Ball (1969) -- not much if any (even proto-) metal to be honest, but lots of accidental dub space in both, and "Real Fright" is especially intriguing given the very ska-like bassline/rhythm used through the entire song (which might be on purpose, of course, given that plenty of ska had already existed by 1969, and some had even hit in the States -- though Desmond Dekker's "Israelites" didn't chart in the U..S. until May of that year, three months after Ball did.)

Chemical People - "The Way We Die Now"

Tried to find it on youtube, starts around 6:07:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6NGP59LT4k

(from 1990)

Slade's Cocky Rock Boys (Rule O.K.) (released '83 towards the end of their street metal phase) has a weird psych sfx-y dub breakdown in the manner of Whole Lotta Love/Get Down Make Love/Rocket.

Also from the same album, Ready to Explode - which is an absurd nine-minute speedy tune that gets slit into several pieces by several disorienting interludes with bumblebee swarm racing cars being commentated on in a hyperspace echo chamber, among other things.

Other tracks I feel fit the spirit of the thread in some way: The Offpsring's Hit That, XTC's Travels in Nihilon, Incubus' Magic Medicine and Calgone, Hendrix's 1983, P.O.D.'s Youth of the Nation

also another Queen one - Blurred Vision. Which has a great burbling acid house-ish bass.

I’ve really been feeling like I miss the early 00s lately but the hstencil/jess/chuck exchange in the first section of this thread flashed me back to the times when it seemed like every message board was like that and while they probably still are to some degree I realized maybe I don’t miss that era as much as I thought

I feel like Bill Laswell probably has loads of stuff that counts - both as a performer and a producer (esp in the 80s?) - but I haven't a clue what.

God?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-27Cl8935bg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JxH1rWl7ts

Terminal Cheesecake?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP2ltA9X1vw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HWar14MZmo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NC29v3dU4o

(early) Scorn?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q5uIMgRBIA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqo3-Qlb7j4

Maybe this, which another thread just reminded me of

https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/new-age-doom-lee-scratch-perry/lee-scratch-perrys-guide-to-the-universe/

Skunk Anansie's Charlie Big Potato has a bit (at 3:39) where it was ordinarily lurch into the big industrial metal riffola riff but instead subsides into dubby waters

would* ordinarily