Culture or Swing Machine, Dub It Reggae

It’s remarkable how wide- ranging dub reggae’s influence has been in pop music: hip-hop, sampling, dancehall deejays, multiple dance remixes, the work of producers like the Orb in the trance-ambient sphere or the late David Cole of C+C Music Factory. Directly or indirectly, elements of each can be traced back to the sonic experiments that began in Jamaican studios 25 years ago.

The endless web of dub variations--both in and out of reggae--is the subject of this edition of On the Offbeat, a periodic column on roots, ethnic and pop music forms from around the world.

**** Culture, “Culture in Dub: 15 Dub Shots,” Heartbeat, and **** Burning Spear, “Social Living,” Blood and Fire (British import). Great dub is the musical equivalent of guerrilla warfare--the element of surprise is crucial and “Culture in Dub” is a great dub album. The material dates from the Jamaican vocal trio’s late ‘70s creative peak and engineer Errol Brown skillfully manipulates the elements from that strong song foundation to create a constantly shifting, engrossing dance of the familiar and unexpected.

“Social Living” isn’t a dub recording, so why include it here? Simple. Recorded in 1979 with the cream of Jamaican musicians and members of Britain’s Aswad, this may be Burning Spear’s best album and it’s never been released in the U.S.

*** 1/2 Mad Professor, “The Lost Scrolls of Moses,” Ariwa/RAS. Even when dub lost some of its hip appeal in the ‘80s, the Mad Professor kept the dub faith by releasing an album a year on his Ariwa label. The British producer’s latest CD meshes keyboard bass lines with heavy blasts of echo and reverb, yet reggae’s essential flow never gets swamped in the technology. The Professor is no minimalist--he fills up virtually every open space, but so skillfully the music never descends to the level of kitchen-sink overkill.

*** 1/2 African Head Charge, “In Pursuit Of Shashamane Land,” On-U Sound/Restless. The dub bug bit producer Adrian Sherwood nearly 20 years ago and the underground reputation spawned by his On-U Sound label recordings extended beyond reggae to work with alternative heroes Ministry and Nine Inch Nails. Restless is now making the On-U Sound catalogue available in the U.S. and “Shashamane Land” is a strong outing from one of Sherwood’s veteran units.

African Head Charge stresses percussion overlaid with spacey vocal chants and electronic effects--the sound marries the high-tech and organic into something akin to a futuristic take on a traditional Rasta drum ensemble. The Revolutionary Dub Warriors, a new Sherwood group with an aggressive, close-to-industrial dance stance, is also worth checking out.

** 1/2 Axiom Ambient, “Lost in the Translation,” Axiom/Island. Bill Laswell is another dub-influenced producer/auteur, but forget about rhythm on this two-CD set of “sound sculptures” drawn from recordings on his Axiom label. Apart from dropping in a couple of driving bass lines, the productions ignore the dance dimension for soothing, soaring melodies.

Laswell draws on a genre-blurring range of sounds--jazzman Pharoah Sanders’ spiritual saxophone, Indian and Arabic music segments, atmospheric rock/jazz guitar--to weave through the eight lengthy pieces. He delivers on basic ambient principles--the music always shifts just as it borders on sounding the same for too long and there’s always different music happening if a listener’s attention drifts away and returns.

** 1/2 Swing Machine, “Deep Vibes,” Instinct. Swing Machine falls in the acid jazz camp but writer-producer Reynald Deschamps displays the sensibility and skills of a top dub producer. Deschamps is hampered by dance floor requirements for static grooves that give the music a rigid bottom. But he generally sustains interest with arrangements that adroitly move the Swing Machine’s melodic elements in and out of the mix spotlight.

Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to four stars (essential).