Psychedelic Dub
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The most experimental, hallucinatory branch of dub, where the studio effects become the subject: dense layers of tape delay, backwards sounds, phasing, sampled voices, animal and jungle noises and disorienting spatial trickery pile onto the riddim until it dissolves into surreal texture. Basslines still anchor the mix, but the arrangements sprawl, warp and disorient, closer to musique concrète than to the dancehall. The mood is trippy, immersive and cosmic. Dub taken to the edge of abstraction.
History
Lee "Scratch" Perry's Black Ark productions, above all "Super Ape" (1976), pioneered psychedelic dub, drenching riddims in tape saturation, echo and found sound until they shimmered and decayed. In Britain, producer Adrian Sherwood's On-U Sound label extended the aesthetic through the polyrhythmic, ritualistic collages of African Head Charge and the studio band Dub Syndicate, blending West African percussion and sampled voices into "a vision of a psychedelic Africa." Scientist's horror-themed sets and later ambient- and space-dub producers carried the experimental impulse forward, making psychedelic dub the tradition's most adventurous, sound-design-driven wing.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- David Katz, People Funny Boy: The Genius of Lee 'Scratch' Perry (2000)
- Michael E. Veal, Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae (2007)
- Bandcamp Daily, 'The Groundbreaking Psychedelic Dub of African Head Charge'