MIND DE-CODER 20

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MIND DE-CODER 20

“Jus' lick back de riddim fi I, seen?”

JOHHNY CONQUEST     NOR’ EASTER

Given that I decided the other day that Mind De-Coder is too white, it’s ironic I should start today’s show with a track that’s virtually Country and Western – more or less the whitest music ever made if we ignore, for the sake of argument, the polka, but somehow it just about works, creating a vibe and giving Bob Marley something to say a few words over. Nor’ Easter can be found on the album UPTOWN FOR THE AMERICAS, released in 2001 by Johnny Conquest, a band about whom I know sadly nothing. 

SOUND IRATION     IRATION TIME

This is more like it – Sound Iration are reggae sound system operator and pirate DJ Nick Manesseh and collaborator/bassist Scruff who recorded SOUND IRATION between 1986 and 1988, around about the time that UK club culture was experiencing major sonic and cultural shifts: acid house and rave parties were blossoming and electronic music was revving up into a full-blown phenomenon. Steeped in the tradition of roots and dub acts but inspired by the electro beats coming up from the clubs, Sound Iration offered raw, minimalist dub tracks comprised mostly of looped bass lines, steady computer drum rhythms and echoing shards of piano, synth riffs and sound effects. The sound would later be alternately dubbed UK Steppers and digi-dub owing to the music’s four-four kick drum patterns and digital composition – but the melodica saturated Iration Time with its mournful piano and deep bass notes keep it real.

PRINCE FAR I      NEGUSA NAGAST

Despite his name appearing in the title, MEGABIT 25 1922-DUB is actually more of a tribute album to Prince Far I than a work by the man himself, featuring dubs from a number of bands, including Roots Radics, with whom he worked on his CRY TUFF volumes. MEGABIT 25 1922-DUB was, in fact, produced, arranged and edited by Roy Cousins who then sampled Far I’s remarkable voice to marvelous effect, as can be heard here on the opening track, Negusa Nagast, which, like the other titles on the album, appears to be written in a language with which I’m unfamiliar.

PRINCE JAMMY AND KING TUBBY     THRONE OF JUDGEMENT

This track is from HIS MAJESTY’S DUB, one of those albums whose provenance is difficult to trace. It seems to have been recorded throughout the mid-1970’s  by Jah Woosh at studios all across Jamaica featuring outstanding performances from some of the finest Jamaican instrumentalists of the era, including Sly Dunbar, Robbie Shakespeare, Vin Gordon, Bobby Ellis, and ‘Family Man’ Barrett. It then seems to have been given the dub treatment by Prince Jammy and King Tubby at some later date and released some time between 1976 and 1983, the history at this point becomes contradictory, to say the least. It remains, however, a typically outstanding dub album from two masters of the form.

SCRATCH AND THE UPSETTERS     BLACK VEST

Black Vest is taken from the classic dub album SUPER APE, produced by the legendary Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry in 1976, and which, as the cover promises, pretty much dubs it up ‘blacker than dread’ (although, being whiter than white, I’m not entirely sure what ‘blacker than dread’ actually means – if I’m honest, I don’t know what an iration is either, but I’ll have two please, just to be on the safe side). Unlike most dub albums, which are sparse and play around with space, Perry fills the sound with layers of dense rhythms that practically ooze like molasses from the speakers.

Strictly speaking, it’s not a dub album at all, because that would imply that there’s heavy doses of echo and reverb to be heard, which there isn’t. On the other hand, it’s not simply a reggae album either, because not all the tracks have vocals. Some critics have even compared it to a jazz album, with Perry playing the mixing board like an instrument,
and placed alongside Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew. It is, in fact, what it is.

Black Vest deconstructs Max Romeo’s War Ina Babylon over a dubwise version of the track with vocals from Max Romeo, Jah Lion and James Brown (although, not that James Brown, but the other one) sliding in and out of the mix with Perry artfully constructing the musical mosaic at the mixing desk. Marvellous.

DUB SYNDICATE     STONED IMMACULATE

Dub Syndicate’s STONED IMMACULATE, released 1991, is my favourite dub album of all, despite the bass lines appearing to be played by the keyboardist, which, let’s face it, doesn’t really cut it for roots reggae. (On the other hand, The Doors’ bass lines were played out on keyboards too so it all sort of ties together on the title track which features Jim Morrison vocal snippets from American Prayer). Nevertheless, this is the album I reach for each summer – Adrian Sherwood’s production is typically over-the-top with psychedelic flourishes, Prince Far I is sampled alongside Jim Morrison, Tommy McCook and the Upsetters, and the whole thing has a playful, experimental feel to it that makes it essential listening.

KING TUBBY      KING TUBBY’S IN FINE STYLE

King Tubby (Osbourne Ruddick to his mum) invented dub, of course, and the remix, and adding special effects like extreme delays, echoes reverb and phase effects – which puts it in the same cosmic ballpark as psychedelia as far as I'm concerned. In doing so, he elevated the role of the mixing engineer to a creative fame previously only reserved for composers and musicians and may even be seen as the direct antecedent of dance music as well. He was highly prolific in the 70’s and he’s a bugger to collect, but you could do a lot worse than start with the 2004 compilation IN FINE STYLE, a double disc that compiles 46 dubs mixed at King Tubby’s Studio, which, while barely scratching the surface of his creative output, do represent the best of the best. King tubby’s In Fine Style is on it, for a start.

Nevertheless, I have him fade off into some noise . . .

ALAN BLACK     EARTHBOUND/LEAVING

Two tracks from my current get out of gaol free card, the mighty THE ORTICA, released online by Alan Black here, in which space is entered, explored, made contact with and experienced …so not unlike dub, really.

KING TUBBY AND PRINCE JAMMY     THE POOR BARBER

A classic dub from Fatty and Jammy in which The Poor Barber is disrupted with giant thunderclaps of spring-reverb, outer space blips and bloinks,  and showers of rimshots cutting across the beat, twisting and bulging around cyclical hi-hat patterns. Sampled from John Holt’s 1969 hit Ali Baba, all other versions seem to be based upon an original riddim (I know, I know…) created by Bunny Lee for a track by Jackie Edwards in 1975 that possibly documents the rivalry between dreads and barbers, although it’s conceivable that I might be making that bit up. It’s been covered, remixed and dubbed up literally hundreds of times, but this version, based in Dr Alimantado’s I Killed the Barber, appears on DUB GONE 2 CRAZY, released 1996, an excellent collection of dub singles mixed by King Tubby and Lloyd ‘Prince Jammy’ James. I’ve even provided my own version, I guess, buy over dubbing some vocals I’ve always liked from Borderline Dub (Ali Baba version).

DUBITAL     INSIDE MG

Dubital are an Italian duo who actually do a very fine line in melody-laden electronic dub, but I’ve chosen this messed up ghostly dancehall track that I found on the Epitonic download site here . If there’s anything else to know about them I’m afraid it’s lost to me.

PRIMAL SCREAM    JU-87

Following the release of their 1997 album VANISHING POINT, the boys sent the master tapes off to Adrian Sherwood and asked him to remix them in a dub version stylee. What he, in fact, did was de-assemble the tracks, erase them, cut them up, lose them in the echo chamber, reconstructed them and pushed them out into dub orbit. The result was ECHO DEK – a mightily subverted album of great sonic force. JU-87, a re-working of Stuka is so messed up it’s one of the most imbalanced and disorientating dub tracks produced in the 90’s. Needless to say, Primal Scream were thrilled.

THE ORB feat. LEE ‘SCRATCH’ PERRY     GOLDEN CLOUDS

The legendary Lee 'Scratch’ Perry and The Orb come together on last year’s THE ORBSEVER IN THE STAR HOUSE  - a dubwise album of restrained but dense rhythmic echoes and deep bass over which Perry raps (although this is meant more in the beat sense of the word – stream of consciousness poetry delivered in authentic patois – Lee Perry is no rapper). You may recognize Golden Clouds as re-working of Little Fluffy Clouds (“…and what were the clouds like when you were young, Mr Perry?") but, instead, this track simply samples elements of The Orb’s signature tune in a dubbed out nod to the original, and is all the more enjoyable for the vague familiarity.

THE MOODY BOYS     FREE

A classic dub heavy dance cut over the skanking dub beats by The Moody Boys, a house music production and remix outfit, featuring the KLF’s Jimmy Cauty - Free can be found on their 1990 release JOURNEY INTO DUBLAND. Co-founder Tony Thorpe kept the name after Cauty left but changed it to Moody Boyz and was last heard of remixing Hollie Cook’s Milk and Honey.

AFRICAN HEAD CHARGE     THE BIG COUNTRY

African Head Charge is the brain-child of Ghanaian percussion-meister Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah, who gathers together the field recordings of African and Asian singers from which he gleans the sweetest and/or eeriest passages he can find and then constructs ground-shaking grooves around them; the resulting sound sculptures are whipped into a dubwise frenzy by modern dubmaster Adrian Sherwood, whose imprint appears to be all over the show. The Big Country is taken from the 2010 release VISION OF A PSYCHEDELIC AFRICA, although it may have been recorded in 2005 and was a Japanese only release or something (I wouldn’t want you to think that I’m an authority on the On-U Soundsystem back-catalogue or anything). In many ways this track serves as an exposition on the distilled essence of Noah's musical conception, with eerily beautiful field recordings, an elephantine reggae groove, and Sherwood's patented production craziness. The album pretty much does what it says on the label and is without doubt my favourite release from this psychedelic dub collective.

LINTON KWESI JOHNSON     VICTORIOUS DUB

Victorious Dub can be found on LKJ IN DUB, released 1980, righteous dub re-workings of tracks from the London dub poet’s previous two albums, FORCES OF VICTORY and BASS CULTURE. Produced and arranged by LKJ and the semi-legendary Dennis Bovell, LKJ IN DUB is generally regarded as one of the most influential British dub albums of all time (it says here) despite being essentially the work of Britain’s premier dub poet without the poetry.  The insistent beat and melodic horn parts that mark the eight cuts on the album, however, may be seen as the musical representation of Johnson's impassioned political lyrics with their stolid insinuation and determinism. Clearly, this is not the album with which to introduce oneself to Johnson's work. However, fans who want to pay more attention to the strictly musical side of Johnson's work, or those who just want to hear some good dub from a different source, LKJ IN DUB will do nicely.

LOVE GROCER feat. CHESHIRE CAT     A LITTLE VERSION

New dub (well, newish) from the Love Grocer, sometimes known as the Crispy Horns, a big roots reggae band associated with the new roots/dub scene of the 90’s, with a version of the opening track to their 2001 album ROCKING WITH…THE LOVE GROCER. In truth, I know so little. 

DR. ALIMANTADO     THE BEST DRESSED CHICKEN IN TOWN

Reggae was always popular with the nascent punk scene following Don Lett’s legendary DJ sets at The Roxy – the punk scene was so new that there were no punk singles to play so instead he played a selection of dub and roots reggae to the receptive audience. Dr. Alimantado was especially popular after Johnny Rotten name-checked him in an interview in 1987. THE BEST DRESSED CHICKEN IN TOWN is the title track from his debut album, released in 1978, essentially a collection of tracks recorded in the mid-70s, featuring the good doctor toasting over singers such as John Holt, Gregory Isaacs, Jackie Edwards and Horace Andy. Handling production chores himself, he then enlisted top reggae engineers and producers like Lee 'Scratch' Perry, King Tubby, and Scientist to add their own alchemy to the mix and released one of the finest albums from reggae’s golden age.

FUN-DA-MENTAL     MOTHER INDIA

Fun-Da-Mental were, and possibly still are, a multi-ethnic hip-hop–ethno-techno–world fusion music group with a hard line in strong Islamic affiliation and advocacy, and an outspoken political stance that you’d be correct in thinking of as militant but in what you’d also be correct in calling an Asian Public Enemy kind of way - and an energetic fusion of Eastern and Western musical forms, of course. Mother India is doubly powerful because, on an album that features long elements of Islamic perspective, commentary and assertion, it challenges the patricharchal thought system embedded in that same Islamic belief system - and because it’s dubbed out and classical as hell. I’ve loved this track since I first came upon it on their debut album SEIZE THE TIME in 1994, a musical and politically challenging record that was all the better for daring to include this track on it. There’s a vocal-less version of it called Mother Africa Feeding Sister India which appeared on that album by the Thievery Corporation, which is where you’ve probably heard it before. Imagine how empowering it would be for a young Muslim girl to hear this track nowadays.

THE ORB     TOWERS OF DUB (MAD PROFESSOR REMIX)

Towers of Dub is one of The Orb’s classic tracks, of course. This slightly chaotic ambient dub mix  by the Mad Professor, coming in at a full 15 minutes, is one of the bonus tracks that came with the release of The Blue Room, another classic Orb release in 1994, not least because it comes in at 39 minutes and 57 minutes, thus qualifying it as a single…and who can forget the sight of the two of them playing 3-D chess on Top of the Pops?

UNKNOWN

This kills me – I came across this track on an extended Coldcut mix late one Saturday night in 1995 on Kiss FM while visiting London for the weekend for reasons that I shan’t bother you with. Crucially, I taped 45 minutes of the show and this track is from that very tape. But I’ve no idea who the singer is or what the song is called. Googling ‘Shalom, my people, Shalom’ takes me pretty much where you’d expect, and beyond that – well, just between you and me, I don’t really know what she’s saying – seerightnow, armsno businessguarantings – try Googling that and see what you get. But, you see, I really, like this track and have done since that fateful visit to London. So if you know what it’s called, and can tell me after all these years, you will not find me ungrateful.

LADYSMITH BLACK MAMBAZO     HELLO, MY BABY

From that same Coldcut  session, but this is Ladysmith Black Mambazo, of course, from their album ENZINKULU, the one that featured their first English language songs, from 1979. A slightly different version of the song appeared on their 1987 album SHAKA ZULU, which was an introductory album to the group, on which they sang new versions of older songs for the Western audience they’d just gained following their success on Paul Simon’s Graceland. Sublime, nonetheless.

ERNIE SMITH     PITTA PATTA

I think Ernie Smith was awarded the The Badge of Honour for Meritous Service in the Field of Music by the Jamaican government for this lovely single, Pitta Patta, released in 1973 utilizing Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s ‘musical transplant’ rhythm (No? Me neither). He also beat songwriters Neil Sedaka and Michael Legrand, to win the Grand Prize at the World Popular Song Festival in Tokyo. Pitta Patta can also be found on his 1974 album LIFE IS JUST FOR LIVING. It’s just one of those song’s that make you feel good about yourself, and, therefore, a fitting way to round off the show. I mess with it at the end.

BOB MARLEY     STIR IT UP (ACOUSTIC)

Of course, I couldn’t finish the show without playing a little something by Bob Marley, but curiously enough, he wasn’t much one for dubbing up his sound, although the occasional track does exist. Instead, I thought I’d play an acoustic version of Stir It Up which, in its way, is just a rare. This track appears on the semi-legendary acoustic medley, recorded in Sweden during the summer of 1971, when Marley was working on a film soundtrack with Johnny Nash, best known for his 1972 hit, I Can See Clearly Now. In fact, I believe the recording is from a session where Bob was actually teaching Nash some songs, including Stir It Up, which actually became a big hit for Nash. This is Bob Marley at his rawest – just his guitar and the songs he wrote, something special for this week’s Mind De-Coder.

Enjoy, and may the peace of Jah be wid you. This was Mind De-Coder 20. I thank you.