Dub
50 vinyl records found
Dub emerged from reggae in the late 1960s as engineers and producers discovered the creative potential of the mixing desk itself. By treating the studio as an instrument, pioneers like King Tubby and Lee Perry built a sound centered on instrumental remixes, heavy bass, and layered echo effects that would influence decades of electronic and dance music.
About the Dub genre
The roots of dub trace back to a happy accident in 1968 when engineer Byron Smith forgot to include the vocal track during a session at Duke Reid's Treasure Isle studio in Kingston, Jamaica. Sound system operator Ruddy Redwood kept the instrumental result and had his deejay Wassy toast over it at the next dance. This discovery prompted other studios to explore instrumental versions, with Errol Thompson engineering The Undertaker by Derrick Harriott and the Crystalites in 1970, the first strictly instrumental reggae album.
By 1973, dub had crystallized into its own subgenre through the competitive efforts of multiple Jamaican engineers and producers. Lee Perry and the Aquarius studio team of Herman Chin and Errol Thompson both recognized the market demand simultaneously and released the first fully instrumental dub albums that year. Perry's Blackboard Jungle Dub in Spring 1973 became a landmark recording. What made dub distinctive was the emphasis on drum and bass frequencies, the extensive use of echo and reverb, occasional vocal snippets from originals, and processed sound effects like birds, thunder, or water. Keith Hudson's Pick A Dub in 1975 further established the format as essential listening for collectors interested in reggae production and the evolution of remix culture.