10 dub albums that changed my world (Pt 1)

Plus Le Motel, e-Dancer, DJ Python and more

An image from Foixà in Catalonia’s lovely Baix Empordà. Don’t know why but it made me think of dub.

In my recent post about Loidis' One Day - TL:DR I don’t much like it - I had a whine about the producer’s description of his music as “dub mnml emo tech”, pointing out that “dub itself was never conservative and on One Day it feels like the genre has been reduced to some very basic signifiers - low bass, echo - without paying heed to its radical spirit”.

The recent noise about a dub techno revival has made me think about this again. I have my doubts about dub techno as a genre on the grounds that Basic Channel pretty much invented and mastered it when they released their first 12 inch back in 1993; and that a lot of dub techno - like One Day - seems to take its influences from other dub techno records, rather than dub itself, resulting in pallid photocopies of what was a very progressive musical genre.

Rather than concentrate on the negative, though, I thought I would put together a list of 10 dub and dub-adjacent albums that changed my world, in one way or another. I am FAR from an expert in dub and reggae - which is one reason I welcome your listening suggestions in the comments - but I started listening to dub at an impressionable age and barely a week has passed since then when I haven’t put on at least some dub music. So I hope you enjoy it. And remember: a dub is for life, not just for One Day.

(PS The list turned out so wordy I have split it into two. Part one arrives this week. Part two next Wednesday. If you like it, why not subscribe to the Line Noise substack to get it direct to your inbox?)

EDIT: Part two is now available here.

1) Keith Hudson - Pick a Dub (1974)

Dub evolved out of reggae and more specifically out of “versions”, the practice of releasing exclusive takes on popular songs in the late 1960s with the vocals mixed out and added studio effects, principally echo and reverb, and a heavy emphasis on the rhythm section. When people talk of dub as the grandfather of the remix, it is this they are talking about: the ability to create something dramatically new from existing songs by manipulating what is already there.

Early pioneers of the form included King Tubby and Lee “Scratch” Perry and the two Jamaican producers collaborated on what was, perhaps, the first dub album, 1973’s Upsetters 14 Dub Blackboard Jungle, which was released when it became clear that there was a market for the new dub sound in and of itself, rather than as a reggae add on

Black Board Jungle is heavy as bricks, as rough as a dirt road and as hauntingly beautiful as Picasso’s Guernica. Keith Hudson’s Pick a Dub, which followed in 1974, was dub’s first classic, though, a brilliantly elegant work of studio trickery that went light on effects in favour of subtly highlighting different musical elements, like Augustus Pablo’s unforgettably eerie melodica in the title track and the spectral trails of Earl “Chinna” Smith’s guitar in Black Heart, all played out to some of the biggest, most corporeal bass lines ever committed to record. (Keith Hudson’s 1977 album Brand also comes highly recommended, incidentally.)

2) Augustus Pablo and King Tubby - King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown (1976)

It says a lot about the ultra-concentrated talent pool in the Jamaican music industry that Black Board Jungle, Pick A Dub and King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown featured a lot of the same musicians on two, or even all three, of the albums. Augustus Pablo, a producer and multi-instrumentalist, was one of these and he steps up to the spotlight on King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown, an album that is regularly cited as one of the greatest reggae releases of all time.

Where Black Board Jungle and Pick A Dub are stripped back and often skeletal in their production, King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown is more musical in its approach. Like Pick A Dub, Rockers….’ songs typically spotlight one particular instrument - the piano on Braces Tower Dub or the organ on Each One Dub - but the record’s rounded-out production means that you can often make out more than the ghost of the original song on the dub. (See, for example, the title track, which is a version of Jacob Miller’s Baby I Love You So.)

What I most love on Rockers…., though, are the drums. King Tubby’s mixing (on top of Pablo’s production) puts the drums right to the front of the mix and you can hear every hi-hat tap in crystal clarity, even as Tubby adds shades of studio trickery. Young Generation Dub has one of my favourite drum lines ever, an endlessly-listenable parade of production tweaks over rock solid playing from Carlton Barrett.

(Talking of King Tubby, a friend who knows a great deal about dub recommends Yah Congo Meets King Tubby & Professor At Dub Table, a 1995 compilation of mid 70s dubs by Tubby and his then assistant, Professor, as well as Jah Lloyd’s 1974 King Tubby collaboration Herbs of Dub, which has some of the most beautiful flute playing you will ever hear.)

3) The Upsetters - Super Ape (1976)

There is some debate about whether Lee “Scratch” Perry and The Upsetters’ 1976 masterpiece Super Ape is actually a dub album, given the record’s frequent use of full vocal performances, rather than dubbed-out fragments.

Hardcore dub purists can flee to Black Board Jungle. But I don’t see why we should deny ourselves the pleasure of a record that combines the finest dub production techniques with sharp songwriting and gorgeous vocal work (see album opener Zion’s Blood, in particular).

Super Ape is warm and approachable in a way that few dub albums can rival, its innovations nestled away under the surface in the name of the greater good, rather than front and centre of the mix, which makes it a fantastic (although atypical) introduction to dub.

4) The Arabs - Crytuff Dub Encounter Chapter 1 (1978)

By the end of the 1970s dub had gone international, picking up a particularly fervent audience in the UK. Cry Tuff Dub Encounter Chapter 1 - by Jamaican deejay and producer Prince Far I but originally credited to his backing band The Arabs - was produced by Far I, engineered by UK-based guitarist and producer Dennis Bovell and mixed by Adrian Sherwood, a British dub icon who founded the On-U Sound label, played in Tackhead and has produced everyone from Lee “Scratch” Perry to Nine Inch Nails. Creation Rebel - often hailed as the UK’s first dub band - also feature on percussion. (More of them later.)

Cry Tuff Dub Encounter Chapter 1 is a deep, dank, rolling affair, an album that doesn’t, perhaps, advance dub as a musical genre but is immaculately put together, showcasing the playing of some of Jamaica’s finest musicians - including Sly Dunbar on drums and Flabba Holt on bass - and Sherwood’s unfussy but always fascinating mixing. (The bizarre popping noises, like water dropping melodically from a tap, on Long Life are a particular favourite.) Cry Tuff… is utterly hypnotic, too, an album to lose yourself to on long, head-nodding nights.

5) Prince Jammy - Kamikazi Dub (1979)

Prince Jammy - aka King Jammy, aka Lloyd Woodrowe James - got his start working at King Tubby’s recording studio, eventually moving on to release music under his own name in the late 1970s. Kamikazi Dub is one of his first solo albums and perhaps his best. The album has a vague Kung Fu theme - song titles include Shoalin [sic] Temple, Oragami [sic] Black Belt and Fist Of Fury and the cover includes a dragon, beating Wu Tang to the punch by a fair few years.

You would, perhaps, struggle to notice the influence of Eastern culture on the album, although its tastefully minimal production - with immaculate work from Sly Dunbar on drums and his long-time bass partner Robbie Shakespeare - makes it one of the few dub albums you potentially could smuggle into a Shaolin Temple and enjoy at low volumes as the sun sets on a fulfilling day. (I mean, don’t, obviously.)

James, incidentally, would later produce Wayne Smith’s Under Mi Sleng Teng, one of the most important works in the transition from reggae to dancehall, thanks to its digital rhythm.

….. and I will be back next week with part two, where things get more modern.

Some listening

Mount Kimbie - The Trail (Astrid Sonne remix)

What the hell are they putting in the water in Denmark? Astrid Sonne’s remix of Mount Kimbie’s The Trail makes the song entirely her own, her production putting delightfully awkward oh-has-it-stopped-playing? gaps into the original musical base, while her voice floats over the top with the understated menace of green fog.

Le Motel - Hanoi - The Motorcycle Empire / Hà Nội - Đế chế Xe ôm

Le Motel’s Odd Numbers / Số Lẻ album, coming soon on the ever-sparkling Balmat label, is a fascinating record, which takes ambient music to Vietnam, courtesy of field recordings that Le Motel made while traveling in the country in 2023. This shouldn’t, perhaps, be as surprising and different as it is in an increasingly globalised world. But the gentle burble of mopeds, passing voices and cooking sounds is genuinely transportative, putting the listener right in the heart of Hanoi.

Hanoi - The Motorcycle Empire / Hà Nội - Đế chế Xe ôm is one of the darker moments on the record, at least initially, opening in a series of menacing synth stabs, rain and motorbike revs - it reminds me a lot of Ben Frost’s soundtrack to Dark, which I love - only for the song’s last minute to flip the scrip into bucolic warbles that feel all the more welcoming after the initial nerve jangle.

e-Dancer - Emotions

One of the reasons I started this Substack in the first place was in reaction to the fact that nobody seemed to be interested in a review of a new Inner City album from Kevin Saunderson and co. So how, then, could I ignore the first new album from Kevin Saunderson’s e-Dancer project in more than 25 years - and all the more so when it involves Saunderson’s son Dantiez, given how much I love a family lineage in techno?

Emotions is the second track released from that eponymous new album and, while not at the heights of, say, e-Dancer’s classic rave screamer Velocity Funk, it has enough gnarled grooves, tainted with an ever so-slight edge of nastiness, to announce that e-Dancer are back. What’s more, Emotions sounds like it should sound absolutely massive coming from a club speaker, which is how it should be for the man who invented the Reese bass.

DJ Python - Besos Robados (featuring Isabella Lovestory)

DJ Python’s forthcoming EP for XL, i was put on this earth, sees the US producer sing on a record for the first time. Embargoes forbid me from talking more about the EP and Python doesn’t sing on Besos Robados, the first single to be released from it, which instead features Isabella Lovestory. But it is fair to say that the production on Besos Robados, a sort of floaty funk, a little like Angel, from Python’s excellent Club Sentimientos Vol 2 EP, gives a good indication of where i was put on this earth is going and I like it a lot.

Things I’ve done

Line Noise - With Ralph Moore

Ralph Moore is a veteran dance music journalist, formerly of NME, Muzik and Mixmag, who has been to Ibiza more times than you’ve visited the dentist; once went on tour with Underworld for a week; and got Fatboy Slim to write a foreword to his new book, in which he compares him to an embedded journalist of dance. That book - On Tour: A Wild Ride in the Dance Music Press - will be published by Velocity Press on March 7. Ahead of that we talked Sunscreem, covermount mix CDs, the state of the dance music press, 2025 cover stars, Pet Shop Boys and why I - at 47 - should go to Ibiza.

Bienvenidos a The White Lotus. Un podcast no oficial.

¿Estás viendo The White Lotus? Nosotros también. Y ahora tenemos un podcast. Hay dos episodios disponibles, sobre los dos primeros capitulos de la temporada 2. Creemos que podrían gustarte.(It’s in Spanish, if you hadn’t guessed.) Episodio 1; episodio 2. Cualquier comentario o sugerencia es bienvenida.

The playlists

Some people make their playlists only available to paid subscribers. So, in a sense, if you follow mine you are actually earning money. And who could say ‘no’ to free cash? Hooray, then, for my best new music of 2025 playlist. And three cheers for my very, very long playlist of the best music from the last five years.