Dub and the disco tradition.

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Music critics and historians often stress the links between Jamaican dub reggae and New York disco of the late 70s and early 80s. I can definately see the connections. Remixers such as Walter Gibbons and Francois Kevorkian were certainly aware of dub. On Gibbons' 1976 remix of "10 Percent" by Double Exposure, he stripped away a lot of the original track to expose the percussion.

However, I was thinking recently that perhaps the differences between dub and the art of the disco remix outweigh the similarities. When I first heard the extended version of "10 Percent", I wasn't even aware that it was a remix. It just seemed like a very good, seamless, soulful disco record. Gibbons created this mix for functional reasons (to fit on a 12 inch record, to keep people dancing longer). It's a fine record but I wouldn't call it a "monumental sculpture of sound". The sonic effects are not distracting.

In contrast, whenever you listen to a King Tubby dub, you can't help but be aware that an act of sonic transformation is in progress. Every drumbeat seems blurred , every note shimmers. The recordings are awash with echo and reverb. There is a real feeling of space in the mix that gives rise to a pictorial quality. I imagine landscapes whenever I hear a Tubby record.

Of course there are some echoey disco tracks (such as Dinosaur L's "Go Bang"), but these are rare. What does everyone else think about the links between dub and disco?

― Mark Dixon, Sunday, 27 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

IIRC, dub was using minimal technology to the fullest - the reason there's so many blurry, shadowy sonic presences is the amount of tracks they had to compress to get around the limitations of a 4- track mixer, and anyone who's used one of those knows about imperfectly erased 'ghosts', tracks losing certain frequencies as they get 'bounced' from one track to the other etc. Dub fully integrated all these technical gremlins into a chracteristic sound - that's why 'digi-dub' sounds so pale and pointless. Disco OTOH - they were using better studio technology, allowing for a more complex level of conceptual/schematic design of tracks. That is, the better the studio, the more idea you're going to have of what's going to come out at the other end - a luxury for auteurs, but not suited to the improvisatory studio guerillas of dub.

― dave q, Sunday, 27 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Then again, maybe dub's tropical sonic ecosystems with mysterious caverns and undergrowth to play in is more ideal for ganja listening, whereas cokeheads and speedfreaks prefer clean, angular lines and effortless forward movement?

― dave q, Sunday, 27 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

world. of. echo.

― jess, Sunday, 27 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I'm ashamed to say that I've never heard "World of Echo". I did hear one solo Arthur Russell track a few years ago. It was very good, but it was far more minimal than I expected. From reading about "dub disco", I've always imagined a very trippy, expansive, spacy music. Dancing to it would be like being submerged in sound. The music would have an almost "aquatic" quality. I've only heard a couple of disco tracks that came close to the "epic" sound of King Tubby.

― Mark Dixon, Sunday, 27 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

dave q is right about the differences in technical quality. The other thing is that in Jamaican Dub they used to send the delay return back to itself, which gives those endless echoes that morph into distortion and blurred, low-grade sound. Disco Dub was a lot cleaner with just straight delay (no 'delay on the delay').

― David Inglesfield, Sunday, 27 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i had a huge post all written about the spread of dub and it's creative misinterpretation by musicians of all stripes outside of jamaica, until IE went wonky and it got deleted. in any event, dub as the most pervasive musical process of the last 30 years: discuss.

― jess, Sunday, 27 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

interesting interview with Tom Moulton, about the origins of the 12" remix.

― michael, Monday, 28 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I happened to listen to the dub side of "Keep on Dancing" by Forrrce (West End) this weekend, a pretty mediocre song at best made fairly interesting by the Francois K. treatment it gets as "Keep on Dubbing". The manipulations are very up-front in the mix, and definately seem informed by listening to jamaican dub (phased vocals, pulling out and emphasising of single sonic events). You're right, it doesn't approach the total-environment feel of say, some King Tubby, but I suspect there are different priorities at work.

― alb, Monday, 28 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Mark fingers the key difference in the first post. Disco dubs are really all about the percussion.

That's why King Tubby et al get that epic sense of space in their records - they tend to be pretty percussion-light, giving space for the other sounds to move around in without being bound to the framework of the beats.

Whereas disco is, obviously, pretty pointless without the beats. To experience the dub effect in a disco record you need to be on a dancefloor - that's what it's designed for. To be grooving to a track and then have everything drop out except the beat, and then have congas phasing, flanging and echoing all over the club, bouncing from speaker to speaker while everyone gets their heads down and jacks is the key bit of the disco dub experience. You can't play those records in a club until you've got the crowd completely in the palm of your hand, otherwise they just don't work. It's a level of dub that requires much more active participation - King Tubby you can just listen to...

― jacob, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.