BETWEEN A ROCK AND A DUBPLATE ALBUM SERIES

Having spent all his working life in Jamaica, there was no opportunity for him to be booked by the BBC, and it is as yet unknown whether Peel marked his passing in any way. He spent his later years mixing occasional dubs and managing record labels (one of these, Firehouse, launched the career of another Peel favourite, Anthony Red Rose). However, King Tubby virtually retired from production in the early 1980s and died a violent death in early 1989.

BETWEEN A ROCK AND A DUBPLATE ALBUM SERIES

For his Radio 3 series Where It's At (1976), John tracked the history of reggae and included King Tubby's Dub Magnificent as an example of producers becoming as well-known as the artists they recorded, and adding that the title was also his opinion of the track. It achieved widespread exposure in the early to mid 70s: Tubby was among the first, if not the first, to capitalise on the popularity of the 'version' (basically, leaving the vocal track off the A side of the single and making an instrumental on the flip for DJs to either remix or 'toast' (=rap) over). p. 117.Peel had been playing reggae on his shows since 1969, and continued to chart its evolution when dub evolved as a sub-genre. 'Meet the studios keeping dubplate culture alive'. 'Nuff Wheel Ups: Exploring Dubplate Culture'. Archived from the original on 16 July 2015. 'Dreams rendered in metal: A look into dubplate culture'. Archived from the original on 4 April 2019. 'Dubplate Culture: Analogue Islands in the Digital Stream'. ^ 'Music House Studio Inside one of London's legendary dubplate studios'.^ 'The strange origin of the UK Reggae big bass sound: John Hassell Recordings, Barnes'.'How Jamaican soundsystem culture conquered music'. Etymology Īccording to David Toop, the ' dub' in dubplate is an allusion to the dubplate's use in 'dubbing' or 'doubling' the original version of a track. New music would regularly be composed and recorded onto DAT tape in order for it to be cut onto dubplate, often so that it could be played that weekend (or even that night).ĭespite the shift to DJing on digital mediums such as CDJs and DJ controllers, dubplates continue to be used for playing exclusive music and have also gained a specialist market in recent years. This would be followed through its descendants UK garage, grime and dubstep, and cutting houses such as Transition. Whilst acetates have been used in the music industry for many years, especially in dance music, dubplates would become a particularly important part of the jungle/ drum and bass scene throughout the 1990s. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Music House in North London and JTS Studio in East London would become the two most prominent 'cutting houses'. John Hassell and his wife ran a recording studio from their suburban house in Barnes, South West London, but would become key to British sound systems and artists such as Dennis Bovell. In the UK, the earliest place to cut reggae dubplates would also be one of the most unlikely.

As such, these would become known as 'dubplate specials' often remarking on the prowess of the sound system playing it, in a bid to win the clash. Special and one-off versions would be cut to acetate for competing in a sound clash, utilising vocals specially recorded to namecheck the sound system. The first use of dubplates is commonly attributed to sound engineer King Tubby and reggae sound systems such as Lloyd Coxsone and Killamanjaro.

Between a rock and a dubplate album