A New Orleans Alternate Reality (Dub Version)
While listening to the new Dub Syndicate reissue series, an alternate history occurred to me. Dub Syndicate was a collaboration between producer Adrian Sherwood and Roots Radics drummer Lincoln “Style” Scott, and it emerged in a transitional moment. The 1970s heyday of dub featured reggae producers Lee “Scratch” Perry, Augustus Pablo, King Tubby, Prince Jammy, Scientist, and Dennis Bovell transforming reggae tracks into psychedelic adventures in groove with subterranean bass lines, snapping snares, and parts that slide in and out of the mix unpredictably, coated with studio effects including all the reverb anyone could handle.
In England in the late ‘70s, reggae, dub, and punk traveled in the same circles, and Sherwood made his name producing reggae artists including Prince Far I and Creation Rebel, as well as punks interested in expanding their horizons, including New Age Steppers, African Head Charge, and Mark Stewart + Maffia. His dub with Prince Far I and Creation Rebel clearly took influence from his predecessors, but he added a more technological component to his work. In that way, his label On-U Sound paved the way to a number of British subdivisions of electronic dance music.
Sherwood opened the door to more aggressive, more industrial dub, and he would be joined on that path by the sonically aggressive Mad Professor. Dub Syndicate’s albums were more restrained; you can hear the values of the previous era in dub with a slight technological upgrade. The bass is rounder and the effects are spacier, but in a mix with Dub Syndicate’s forerunners, none of that would stand out.
The new reissues focus on the second half of Dub Syndicate’s output and include a box set, Out Here on the Perimeter 1989-1996, four Dub Syndicate albums released during that time frame, and the new Obscured by Version, which features Sherwood completely reworking old material into something new. It’s not exactly sunny, but the sound is lighter and maybe more streamlined than the tracks were the first time around. Maybe we hear a slightly more mature perspective, one that doesn’t need to do everything all at once.
Part of my interest in Obscured by Version stems from the album being new material. I digested the set’s best known album, 1991’s Stoned Immaculate, long ago. It’s probably the best known Dub Syndicate album since it found favor at raves in England when people needed a cool down moment. It helps that the title track samples the voice of Jim Morrison of The Doors intoning, “Out here in the perimeter, there are no stars / out here we is stoned immaculate.” People who are high love songs about being high.
I’ve always been a little surprised that dub has so little place in New Orleans’ musical consciousness. Like so many great New Orleans records, it features great rhythm sections at work, and it celebrates grooves as their own reward. You’d think a music community defined in large part by The Meters, their contemporaries, and their spiritual offspring would embrace it, but maybe the specifics of the groove matter. Maybe dub didn’t land because reggae never landed in a meaningful way in New Orleans either.
I first encountered dub in Toronto in the early 1980s, where the leading promoters for punk and new wave shows used dub for the pre-show music. It created its own atmosphere to such a degree that stepping into the venue felt like a step out of the life you were leading just moments before. Dub is a trippy soundscape that creates its own world, and maybe it met its match in New Orleans, where real life is plenty psychedelic.
Part of the issue may be that New Orleans has been a city that values live performance, while dub is a producer’s game. Dub is built on great, musicianly performances, but then the producer shows his hand. New Orleans’ signature producers didn’t do that. Cosimo Matassa frequently said that his contribution to the great records produced at his J&M Studios was pressing “Record,” and Allen Toussaint’s productions focus on the musicians’ performances, so his contributions aren’t obvious.
Here’s a thought experiment: What if someone in New Orleans had engaged more actively as a producer with New Orleans’ funk and dance music? What if a New Orleans producer made their presence clear in the tracks?
Quickie Mart and Galactic’s Ben Ellman, for instance, started down that road by remixing Carnival classics starting in 2010 for the bounce-oriented Gypsyphonic Disko. Galactic’s recordings from the last decade and a half reflect that approach as their recordings are based in live performance, but Ellman and the band clearly use the studio to fine-tune the tracks, often giving them an uncanny, surreal quality as they’re tweaked beyond what a band could do live to make them punchier and more dynamic.
Eric Heigle has shown a willingness to experiment and make the recorded track more than a live document, whether it’s on the 79rs Gang’s Expect The Unexpected or Lost Bayou Ramblers’ Kalenda, which he co-produced with Korey Richey. Nicholas Payton leaned this direction when he released Afro-Caribbean Mixtape, which borrowed from hip-hop’s conceptual vocabulary and contemporary production.
What would we have gained? Maybe just better records, but maybe an actual record industry. Many of the Neville Brothers’ signature songs came from 1981‘s Fiyo on the Bayou, but the album people return to is 1989’s Yellow Moon, produced by Daniel Lanois.
At the end of the 20th Century and start of the 21st, New Orleans had all the funk raw material, but many of the records that came out of the city sounded like funk raw material well after that sound had currency. Every time I hear a Trombone Shorty album, I wish I also heard remixes that put his funk in the electronic forms that make his peers dance.
Even if the development of more production-oriented producers didn’t end up with records that sell better, many artists might have thought through their musical identities in the process. The Soul Rebels started a slow turn in 2004 with Rebelution, when they added a DJ to a number of songs and took the next step in working through their relationship to hip-hop. The result of that work became crucial to their whole musical enterprise.
Add Mannie Fresh to the conversation and you can imagine a very different musical reality, one where New Orleans’ artists don’t have to be onstage working to make money.
For more Alex Rawls musings, check out myspiltmilk.com and @myspiltmilk on socials.
