"version" and "versus" - dub and the science of remixology

VERSUS: DUB and the SCIENCE of REMIXOLOGY

Pulse, 1995

by Simon Reynolds

     Last year, two albums--"Muziq Vs The Auteurs" and

Massive Attack V Mad Professor's "No Protection"--won

critical plaudits with their two different takes on the same

concept: a reknowned remixer's drastic (per)versions of the

original artist's material.

     Massive Attack's languid trip hop is deeply informed by

reggae and sound-system culture, so it wasn't such a huge

leap for the band to invite one of its heroes, UK dub

producer Mad Professor, to rework the "Protection" album.

The Professor's treatments, while often extreme,

were sublimely sensitive to the spirit of Massive, and many

fans and critics reckon "No Protection" superior to the album

proper.  But tekno boffin Mike Paradinas of Muziq and wordy

songsmith Luke Haines of the Auteurs come from utterly

opposed aesthetic universes.  Haines' willingness to

subject his finely honed rock-lit to Muziq's merciless

mutilation seems masochistic (especially given

that Paradinas has never concealed his contempt for the

material he had to rework).

    In both cases, it's the "versus" in the title that's

significant. . In the early '80s, a remix meant an extended,

marginally more dance-friendly version of a pop

song.  But today, "remixing" usually means creating

an almost entirely new track which contains only tiny shards

and ghostly traces of the original. It's now the norm for

remixers to operate with an almost contemptous disregard for

the original work; in turn, their clients give the remixers

licence to deface and dismember. It's this adversarial

attitude on the part of remixer towards remixee that the word

"versus" evokes. Alluding to the reggae tradition of the 'soundclash'--

a contest between rival sound-systems--"versus' also chimes in with the

widely held belief that dub pioneers like King Tubby and

Lee Perry are the founding fathers of today's science of

"remixology"

    "Versus" is the subtext of so much of the most

challenging and vibrant musical activity of the mid-'90s.  In

the area of "post-rock" experimentalism, the last two years

have seen a spate of "remix" albums by bands like God, Scorn,

Main, Tortoise and Ui, each featuring a gaggle of guest

remixers.  Even Jon Spencer Blues' Explosion got in on the

action with its "Experimental Remixes" EP, wherein the

Explosion's live'n'smokin' R&B got seriously studio-warped by

Moby, Dub Narcotic Sound System, Wu Tang Clan's Genius,

U.N.K.L.E., and Beck & the Beasties' Mike D.

     You can also see the 'versus' concept lurking behind

 John Oswald's "Grayfolded" (where the plunderphonic

pioneer sampled improvisatory material from 100 live versions

of the Grateful Dead's "Dark Star", then wove it into a

seamless, ultra-kosmik uber-jam); behind Stereolab's "Crumb Duck" EP (in

which the band's playing was collaged and processed by

veteran avant-gardist Steve Stapleton of Nurse With Wound); and behind

Faust's comeback album "Rien", which was spliced together by experimentalist Jim O'Rourke out of live recordings of the group's reunion tour of America from

a few years earlier. O'Rourke is also working on a remix project for Mille Plateaux, where he's using the Frankfurt-based label's entire avant-techno roster as source material.

     And all the above is before you even begin taking into account

entire genres of contemporary dance music, like trip hop, house and

jungle, where the simultaneous release of  a bunch of  barely

recognisable remakes by several different remixers (four,

five, six, and more!) is a common occurrence, and the "re-remix"

can prolong a track's dancefloor currency to a year or longer.

Dance music has its own 'remix albums' featuring guest producers, like trip-hopper DJ Food's recent "Refried Food", or The Shamen's CD-worth of versions of the same song, "Move Any Mountain". (One version consisted of dissassembled components of the track, to enable the listener to construct their own remix). Dance also has the 'remix tribute' album, where instead of covering songs by the original artist (as in the rock tribute album), forgotten innovators like Chris & Cosey or Yellow Magic Orchestra are 'honored' by having their classics vandalised by their aesthetic progeny. 

     *         *         *         *         *

      Ironically, one of the few places this kind of remix-mania

isn't the rage is in Jamaica's dancehall reggae scene.

Ironically, because Jamaica was where "versus" began.   

 "King Tubby and Errol Thompson (Joe Gibbs' engineer) 

were the first remixers", claims Steve Barrow, A&R director 

of the reggae reissue label Blood & Fire and dub historian (he is

currently co-authoring "The Rough Guide to Reggae", set for

'97 publication by Penguin). "But dub didn't demolish the

original completely, whereas today the remix is a complete

remake--say, just a wisp of Mariah Carey's vocal over a

whole new rhythm track.  The ur-text of a dub is always the

original vocal version.

   "At first dubs were just called 'instrumentals', then they

started calling them 'versions'," Barrow continues.

"Gradually, more effects were added --echo, thunderclap, etc-

-and dubs got closer to what we now think of as a remix. By

1982 dub had run its course in Jamaica, it had become a

formula. But that was just at the point when dub techniques

were first being picked up by disco producers and used in

remixes."

     According to Barrow, the "versus" in Massive Attack V

Mad Professor is a "take-off" of the "soundclash", an event 

where sound-systems competed to attract the majority of the audience to its end

of the hall or enclosure.  "In the early days of reggae, you

might have Kilimanjaro Vs Jah Love Music. Most Jamaican

dances featured just one sound, but in the ska days, you'd

get places where loads of sounds would meet and compete.

There's always been intense competition in Jamaica between

sound-systems--to get the best, most exclusive records (a.k.a

dubplates), to have the most powerful PA system, the best

sonic effects.  Cos that's the way to increase patrons and

gate-money, and to build up loyal followers".

     Later, "versus" became a sort of free-floating buzzword,

as with albums by Scientist (Overton Brown, a protege of King

Tubby). "With, say, 'Scientist Vs Prince Jammy', that's just a

concept, to recreate the old vibe. It's similar to the idea

of 'meets', as in 'King Tubby Meets The Aggrovators At the

Dub Station': that phrase describes the economic relationship

between the producer and the band, but in a more vibesy way.

It's just a more exciting way of describing the record than

'this is King Tubby working over a bunch of Bunny Lee

rhythms.'"

     The current revival of "versus" has taken the word from

its original context and used it to describe the modern ethos

of remixing, ie. the remixer is paid handsomely for

mutilating, maiming and mutating the client's original work

to the point of utter unrecognisability.  But dub still comes into

play, in so far as dub's bag of tricks -- dropping out the

voice and certain instruments, extreme use of echo, reverb

and delay in order to create an illusory spatiality, signal

processing, the addition of sound-effects--have

been dramatically expanded thanks to digital

recording and mixing techniques.

     The idea that early '70s dub is the origin of

remixology's science of sound-mutation is fervently embraced

by Kevin Martin, who put together the celebrated compilation

"Macro Dub Infection" ("Compilation of the Year" in the Village

Voice's 1995 critics' poll). Drawing on artists as diverse as

New Kingdom, 4 Hero,  Tricky, Tortoise and Laika, "Macro Dub Infection"

tracks the virus-like spread of dub ideas throughout '90s music culture,

contaminating everything from hip hop and jungle to avant-techno

and post-rock.

      Kevin Martin also leads not one but three experimental

bands, God, Ice and Techno-Animal. God is one of a number of

English post-rock outfits who've released "remix" albums.  On

"Appeal To Human Greed", God's jazz-core tumult is vivisected

and reassembled by avant-garde kinsmen such as Bill Laswell

and My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields. Drone-rockers Main

and hip hop noir unit Scorn put out "Ligature" and "Ellipsis"

respectively, long-players based on the same premise.

American avant-rockers have followed suite: Tortoise with the

"Rhythms, Resolutions & Clusters" mini-LP, while Tortoise's

ubiquitous drummer/producer John McEntire is one of the guest

remixologists featured on Ui's "Unlike" CD  Why is there so

much interest in remixing? Is it just a knock-on effect of

rising interest in club-based and post-rave musics, itself a

bored response to the tired traditionalism of grunge'n'lo-fi

in America, and Britpop in the UK?  Or does it run a little

deeper?

    "People have lost respect for the heart of the song,"

argues Martin.  "The song is no longer considered sacrosanct,

it's seen not as a finite entity, but a set of resources that can be

endlessly adapted and extended." Martin thinks this state of

affairs is way cool.  In fact, when he got Kevin Shields to

rework a God track, and hired jungle producers Spring Heel

Jack to remix "Heavy Water" for Techno-Animal's "Babylon

Seeker" EP, he "told them they could leave nothing of

the original if they wanted. They were astounded!"

     The subtext of "Macro Dub Infection", says Martin, is to

show "just how important the processing and treatments have become in modern

music. It's almost like musicians are accessories to the

process now.  You've got people doing great work who lack any

traditional instrumental skills"--Martin means sampler-

wizards and engineer/poets such as Tricky, Howie B,

jungle producers like Dillinja--"because the sampling and sequencing

programmes available enable them to rampage through the back

catalogue, the canon of past music, and create great things."

    Then there's relatively new technology like "hard disk

editing", of which Martin is a big fan: digital software

whereby musical information is chopped up, layered,

rearranged, processed through effects, all within the

"virtual space" of the computer, and to infinitesmal degrees

of intricacy.  What "hard disk editing" and

sampling/sequencing programmes like Cubase demonstrate is the

extent to which the techniques of remixology have ceased to

be a supplement to the original act of creativity. For better

or worse, remixology has infected the process of music-making

itself, with the result that there's no longer such a thing

as an 'definitive version' or a primal moment of creation.

It also means that "music has become a science, it's less

instinctive," admits Martin.  (The invention of

wordprocessing programs and the PC has had a similar effect on

creative writing).

     Ironically, Martin is only just embarking on his first

remix of someone's else music (he's reworked God tracks in

the past).  He's doing an Ice remix and Techno-Animal remix

of the Palace single "More Brother Rides", at the invitation

of the band's UK label Domino.

      "I'm toying with keeping some elements of the track,

'cos I like it, but it is tempting to obliterate it totally.

I think the Techno-Animal version is going to be more

devastating: I want to make it robotic-sounding, so I'll

probably just keep the vocal and highly process it. With the

Ice remix, I mislaid the instrumental contributions by the

other members of Ice, so--after panicking!-- I pitched down the vocal,

reversed the bass-line and accentuated the rhythm by looping

certain drum-fills. The idea is to turn a very cerebral song

into something more physical and hypnotic.  What interests me

about this Palace project is that it's the collision of state-of-art

studio techniques with a simple, heartfelt song grounded in a

rootsy, traditional genre.There's something about Will Oldham's

voice that made me think of roots reggae singer Horace Andy,

and I'm into the idea of playing on that, putting his nasal,

country voice into a post-dub context, framing it with music

that's like a hybrid of Mo' Wax-style  trip hop and PiL's "Metal

Box"."

    Despite "Macro Dub Infection", Martin doesn't necessarily

agree with Steve Barrow that Jamaica is the absolute and

undisputed origin of remixology. Echo effects were being

explored up by all kinds of artists in the psychedelic era,

from Miles Davis to Yoko Ono and Can.  Even before that,

Martin says, the early '60s "English Phil Spector", Joe Meek, "was

doing weird mixes of songs, while Brian Wilson was recording

peculiar alternate takes. It's just that the record companies

wouldn't put them out".

       Dub's concept of the "soundclash" does, however,

inform Martin's latest project "Techno-Animal Vs Reality",

which is soon to be recorded for the Mille Plateaux label.

 Five guest artists--ambient noir-ist Thomas Koner,

trip-hopper DJ Vadim, Sonic Boom (ex-Spacemen 3, currently of

E.A.R), New York dub collective Word Sound, and ambient-

jungle producers 4 Hero--will supply Martin and his partner

Justin Broadrick with  "minimal material". Techno-

Animal will then add rhythm tracks.  The results will be

handed back to the guest artist, who will do a final version;

Techno-Animal will also do its own version of each track.

As such, "Techno-Animal Vs Reality" will combine the

antagonistic aspect of "versus" and the collaborative

implications of "meets".

     *         *         *         *         *         *

If remixology and dub-derived studio-as-instrument sorcery

have rejuvenated left-field rock, there are times when you

have to wonder if remix-mania hasn't gone too far. Is there perhaps a

case for a neo-conservative stance on remixing: ie. that it's

time to bring back remixes that enhance the original or bring out

hidden possibilities, rather than dispense with the

blueprint altogether?

     As well as being a fad, you also have to wonder if

remixology isn't just a giant scam some of the time. There's

a story, which may or may not be apocryphal, concerning

Richard "Aphex Twin" James--a highly sought-after remixer,

even though he's infamous for obliterative revamps that bear

scant resemblance to the original. Hired by a famous band's

record company to do an overhaul, James

agreed, then promptly forget all about the assignment. On the

appointed day, a courier arrived chez Aphex to pick up the

DAT of the remix.  Initially taken aback, James quickly

recovered his composure and scuttled upstairs, rifled through

his massive collection of demos and unfinished tracks, picked

one at random and handed it to the messenger.  Band and

record label both professed themselves highly pleased with

his reinterpretation!

     True or not, many of Aphex's remixes might as well be

all-new compositions. The scale of devastation is in ratio

to his estimation of the band: Curve and Jesus Jones got

absolutely decimated, Saint Etienne (of whom he said "I

think they're a good pop group but I don't actually like

them, if you know what I mean") got severely mutated, but

Seefeel got loving, respectful treatment. For his gorgeous

remixes on that band's "Time to Find Me", James retained most

of Seefeel's original track, albeit considerably rearranged.

     Recently, Aphex Twin has largely dropped out of the

remixing game (although he did rework Gavin Bryars' "The

Sinking of the Titanic", with mixed results).  But James'

buddy Luke Vibert, a.k.a. Wagon Christ, has stepped

into the breech, becoming one of the busiest, most in-demand

remixologists of last year. Not only can he dish it out, he can take it too: 

witness the brilliant Wagon Christ EP "Redone", which features an extremist jungle

version of one Vibert track by none other than Richard James.

     Of all the genres of modern dance, jungle has taken remix-

mania the furthest. As a result, jungle has a fluid, hazy-

round-the-edges notion of authorship. Often, a track will be

popularly attributed to its remixer; generally, remixes are

so dramatically different from the originals that this seems

only just. One example is Omni Trio's "Renegade Snares",

often regarded as a Foul Play track, owing to their remix and

subsequent "VIP" re-remix. Ironically, both versions are

examples of sympathetic remixing at its best: each

dramatically intensifies the thunder'n'joy of the original,

turbo-charging the breakbeats while retaining the tracks'

hooks and melodic refrains, albeit in shuffled order.  Appearing live,

Foul Play have also been known to "play" their masterly

remix of Hyper-On Experience's "Lords of the Null Lines" as

if it were their own track (which in a sense, it is).

     Jungle has introduced some new twists to remixology.

There's the "VIP Remix" (basically a marketing buzzword), and

there's the sequel, on which the original artist re-

interprets his own work.  Metalheads (the name Goldie used to

operate under) put out the "dark-side" classic "Terminator"

in late 1992, then followed it up half-a-year later with

"Terminator II".  Such is the track's repute, a full three

years on, that "Terminator 3" is due out any week now,

confusingly released via another alter-ego, Rufige Cru.

Goldie's ally Doc Scott has just done the same thing to his

'92 classic "Here Come The Drumz", which  has just been 'resurrected' in the

form of "Drumz '95".  Here, the only remnant of the original,

barely recognisable because of the extreme digital processing

bought to bear, is a tiny fragment of Chuck D's vocal:

"drums!".

     *         *         *         *         *         *

Posing questions about authorship and attribution, remixing

also problematises the notion of copyright. If, in the age of

"versus", the remix is tantamount to an all-new track,

why should the original artist get all the royalties? At the

moment, copyright remains with the original artist, and the

remixer gets a flat fee. (Sometimes artists will "swap"

remixes of each others' work). But Kevin Martin says he can

"see it getting to the point where percentage points are

added to the contract, so that the remixer gets royalties.

Then again, in jungle particularly, so much of the 'original'

music is sample-based, that you could argue that neither the

artist nor the remixer are 'creators' in the traditional

sense. It's more the case that both the artist and the

remixer act as 'filters' for a sort of cultural flow".

     In this vision, beats and riffs, textures and

atmospherics, circulate in the sort of "data ocean" described

by David Toop in his book "Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient

Sound and Imaginary Worlds".  Creativity operates on the

macro-level of the entire genre, not the individual artist, a

phenomenon Brian Eno calls "scenius", as opposed to "genius".

The deejay's role in all this is acting as yet another filter

for the information-flow (of course, in jungle and techno, most

"artists" are also professional deejays). The turntable "selector"

constructs the raw material of tracks into a meta-track, a

"journey" for the listener, or, with less propulsive genres

like ambient, an "environment". 

     "Some deejaying is already live remixing," says Kevin Martin. "Not just in the linking and layering together of different records, but in the use of

effects: deejays have 'kill switches' that can drop out

entire frequencies for periods, and some advanced decks have

sampling equipment with two-second memory and an array of

sonic processes."

     In dance cultures like jungle, house and techno, the

"versus" concept is not so important as another dub reggae

term, "version". This was the idea of endlessly re-using the

same drum & bass grooves as the basis for different songs,

so that you'd get entire albums based around a particular

"riddim". In the jungle scene, "version" has gone

haywire, fractal. One particular breakbeat, called "Amen"

because it's taken from a funk track by The Amen Brothers,

has featured in over 2000 tracks and is still being chopped

up and processed.  Hundreds of tracks feature an instantly

recognisable hiccup --a sped-up snatch of James Brown yelling

"you're bad, sister!"--as a convulsive percussive tic. A 21st

Century blend of cyber-dub and digi-funk, jungle has set up

an anarcho-communistic free-for-all in which (musical)

property is theft. In this new world order, everybody is

"versioning" everybody else, and music is about the

undeclared war of all "versus" all.

DISCOGRAPHY

'Muziq Vs The Auteurs' (Astralwerks)

Massive Attack V Mad Professor -- 'No Protection' (Circa, UK

import)

King Tubby, The Observer Allstars & The Aggrovators ---'King

Tubby's Special, 1973-1976' (Trojan)

*************************************

Faust -- 'Rien' (Table of the Elements)

John Oswald -- 'Grayfolded' (Swell/Artifact)

Stereolab/Nurse With Wound -- 'Crumb EP' (Duophonic). One

track appears on the Stereolab compilation "Refried

Ectoplasm".

*************************************

'Macro Dub Infection, Volume One' (Caroline)

God-- 'Appeal To Human Greed' (Big Cat)

Techno-Animal --'Babylon Seeker' EP (Blue Angel Records)

Main --- 'Ligature' (Beggars Banquet)

Scorn -- 'Ellipsis' (Scorn)

Tortoise --'Rhythms, Resolutions & Clusters' (Thrill Jockey)

Jon Spencer Blues Explosion ---'Experimental Remixes'

(Matador)

Ui-- 'Unlike: Remixes Vol 1' (Lunamoth)

******************************************

Aphex Twin Remixes:

   --Seefeel's "pure, impure", released in America as part of

'Polyfusia' (Too Pure/Astralwerks)

   --Saint Etienne's "Who Do You Think Youre Are", on "Hobart

Paving" EP (Heavenly)

   --Gavin Bryars' "Raising the Titanic: The Aphex Twin

Mixes" (Point)

Wagon Christ Remixes:

   --remixes of RHC, Ruby and Project One on "The Real Trip:

Further Self Evident Truths" (Rising High USA)

   --"Redone EP" (Rising High USA)

*****************************************************

Jungle, trip-hop and house remixology:

---"Renegade Snares (Foul Play VIP Re-Remix)", on Omni Trio's

"Music For The Next Millenium" (Sm:)e Communications)

---"I Seen A Man Die (4 Hero NW2 Gangsta Move)" and "4 Hero

Reinforced", on Scarface's "I Seen A Man Die" EP (Virgin,

import)

---Remixes by Wagon Christ, Autechre, Dr Rockit, Fila

Brazilia and others on DJ Food's "Refried Food" (Ninja Tune)

---Green Velvet "Flash Remixes" (Relief) --- 7 versions total on one double 12 inch pack, and another three versions out in the UK too! Is this a record?

THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE QUEEN, The Good, the Bad & The Queen

THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE QUEEN, The Good, the Bad & The Queen

Observer Music Monthly #1 Album of the Year, December 9 2007

by Simon Reynolds

In recent years, Damon Albarn has been cutting something of a David Byrne-like figure. From his Luaka Bop-like label Honest Jon’s and its excavation of worthy world-y musics to his score to Chen Shi-Zheng’s “circus opera” Monkey: Journey to the West (recalling Byrne's collaboration with Twyla Tharp), Blur's front man has matured into one of those honorable elder types, the sort that plugs away at mildly ambitious projects long after their moment in the pop sun has passed.

On the face of it, then, the news that he’d formed a supergroup, The Good, the Bad & the Queen, was not especially pulse-quickening. The opaque, clunky name wasn’t enticing, and nor was the motley line-up of ex-Clash bassist Paul Simonon, Verve guitarist Simon Tong, and Fela Kuti drummer Tony Allen. Yet when it arrived in cold, grey January, the self-titled debut turned out be--provided you gave it time to sink in, let yourself sink into its diffuse melancholy--absolutely brilliant. As you’d expect given Albarn’s previous melodic form, there’s echoes of The Kinks and the more fragile, yearning side of the Clash (“Lost in the Supermarket”). But TGTB&TQ’s sound was Britpop “corrected”. The insularity of that movement’s version of musical Englishness was opened wide to incorporate Allen’s subtly unsettled Afro-beats (skittering most brilliantly on the extraordinary “Three Changes,” a moment of genuine something-new-under-the-sun wonder) and Simonon’s reggae-inflected bass. Indeed like other good 2007 things--Burial and Pinch's dubstep, the cruelly ignored Lady Sovereign album, the North's bassline sound--TGTB&TQ’s “Waterloo Sunset”-in-dub sound showed how reggae has become part of our native pop birthright, a living legacy any Briton can draw on.

With its lyrical references to Goldhawk Road and Lord Hills Bridge, TGTB&TQ was "the record Peter Ackroyd might have made," as Simonon put it. But London here stood for the country as a whole, a “stroppy little island of mixed up people”. Albarn’s imagery of flood-water and derelicts evoked the rudderless malaise that grips the UK (and much of the West). Where Britpop celebrated the invincibility of youth (Oasis’s “Live Forever”, Supergrass’s “Alright”), the mood of TGTB&TQ was… vincible. The contrast between then and now is dramatized by the shift from Albarn’s demeanour and posture circa “Parklife” (the chipper, fresh-faced, perky-spined lad of the video) to the slumped, stubbly, mumble-voiced character of today. The desolate, shaming backdrop of Iraq was crucial to the album's despondent vibe, but just as key was the time of life Albarn has reached. This was adult music, made by and for people who’ve been battered by life a bit.

dancehall and reggaeton 2005

VARIOUS ARTISTS

Power 96 Presents Dancehall and Reggaeton 2005

Uncut, 2005

 When all else fails, there’s always Jamaica. Other genres wax and wane (and right now, most seem to be in doldrums) but dancehall doesn’t really have “off” years. Jamaica has the world’s highest per capita rate of music production--a statistic that reflects not just the centrality of music in the island’s culture, but the fact that the dancehall industry is one of the few avenues for ghetto youth to achieve prosperity and prestige. The ferocious competition between sound systems, producers, and performers ensures a steady--at times, torrential--flow of creativity. Dancehall is simultaneously radical and conservative, reflecting its audience’s twin demands for novelty and continuity. There’s an insatiable hunger for fresh beats, sharper rhymes and ever more idiosyncratic MC stylists. But the basic function of the music--a soundtrack for sexual display and letting off steam--abides.

Judged as electronic musicians, the leading dancehall producers are easily as inventive as any critically-feted techno artist from Koln that you’d care to nominate. Just check the madcap twists and nutty nuances woven into the Bionic Ras riddim (a term that refers not just to the beat but everything in a track that’s not the vocal). Produced by the brilliant South Rakkas Crew, Bionic Ras appears in three different versions on this compilation, ridden successively by two top MCs, Sizzla and Capleton, plus legendary reggae singer Frankie Paul. But while dancehall’s form is constantly mutating, the expressive content is unchanging. The narrow but enthralling scope for MC artistry resides in finding new twists on the same-old same-old: raunchy sex-talk, gangsta menace, blinged-out swagger, and incitement to shake-that-ass. On “Scooby Anthem,” Tony Curtis combines the last two, rhyming “Dom Perignon” with “Louis Vuitton” with “break-a-dawn”--as in, “gonna party til the…”.  

Subject matter-wise, dancehall hasn’t really evolved since the early Eighties, when slackness and gun-talk displaced the roots ‘n’ culture era. True, there are “conscious” dancehall artists, Rasta-ragga types like reformed bad boy Buju Banton. But at sound systems their Babylon-bashing serves as a brief interruption of piety amid the profanity.  On this collection, the great Vybz Kartel mischievously adapts the childhood taunt-rhyme about a girl and a boy kissing in a tree with his chorus “picture you and me/under the tree/F.U.C.K.I.N.G.”. The rest of the lyrics are so patois-thick they’re indecipherable, although I could swear Vybz says something like “spurt up ya belly like Nesquik.” The gals dem don’t go in for euphemisms either: on the insanely catchy “I’ve Got Your Man,”  Lady Saw jeers at her defeated rival-in-love, “he likes it tight and says your [digital bleep effect] is just a little slack”. 

As for the “reggaeton” part of the comp’s title, that’s basically a Latinized version of dancehall that’s spread from Puerto Rico all over the Caribbean and beyond.  The genre’s slender claim on distinctiveness is its bumpety giddy-up beat, which makes me think of that “here comes the galloping major” game where you bounce a toddler on your leg..  Dominating the middle-section of the compilation with tracks from Ivy Queen and Papichulo Crew, the style is enjoyable enough in small doses. But then so was the macarena.

Ragga Dancehall / Elephant Man / Capleton

 Various Artists

The Biggest Ragga Dancehall Anthems 2000

Greensleeves

Elephant Man

Comin' 4 You!

Greensleeves

Uncut, 2001

by Simon Reynolds

From early Nineties jungle to 2-step garage,  dancehall is the  vibe-it-up spice, the pungent flava added by producers for that extra tang of rudeness.   Beyond this subordinate role as a pantry full of  patois vocal licks ripe for sampling, though, dancehall has its own forceful claims as Electronic Music.   

Just check the madcap creativity of Beenie Man's "Moses Cry" on this Greensleeves double-CD for sounds as futuristic and aberrant-sounding as  any avant-techno coming out of, say, Cologne.  Produced by Ward 21 & Prince Jammy, its assymetrical groove is built from palpitating kick drums, garbled  rave-style synth-stabs,  and an eerie bassline that sounds like a human groan digitally mangled and looped.   Or check the quirktronica pulsescape underpinning Beenie on "Badder Than the Rest", or

Elephant Man's amazing "2000 Began,"  which is basically acid techno a la Plastikman.

It's easy to overlook dancehall's sonic strangeness,  though, because the performers' personae are so domineering. The mix seems lopsided, in-yer-face voices battling with the beat to control the soundscape, and crushing the rest of the music (strangulated samples, perky videogame-style blip-melodies) into a skinny strip of no-man's land in between.  The ragga voice, jagged and croaky, is a form of sonic extremism in itself. Dancehall's got to be the only form of modern pop where the typical range for male vocals is baritone to basso profundo. Obviously related to the culture's premium on testosterone and disdain for effeminacy, ragga's ultramasculinist bombast sounds simultaneously absurd and intimidating.  From some DJs, like Buccaneer, you'll even hear a Pavarotti-esque warble, hilariously poised between portentous and preposterous. 

Elephant Man's own voice is a pit-of-belly boom that opens up like an abyss of menace, enhanced by a sinister, serpentile lisp.  Combine this sort of gravelly machismo with typical lyrics about exit wounds and tonight being the opposite of your birthday (ie. your "deathnight") and you've got some seriously chilling Staggerlee business. "Replacement Killer," a series of boasts about how coldblooded Elephant is, actually utilises death-rattle gasps as functioning elements of  the beat.  No surprise, then, that there's a mutual trade pact between dancehall and gangsta rap. "One More" is based on DMX's "One More Road To Cross," "E-L-E-P-H-A-N-T" rips a Dre/Snoop chorus, and the album's fiercest cut "Somebody"  rides the clanking rampage of  the Yardbounce riddim, a fusion of dancehall with the New Orleans bounce style popularized by Cash Money Records.

With six appearances on the Greensleeves compilation, Capleton reaffirms his supremacy over the dancehall already established by 2000's awesome More Fire LP. Like Malcolm X, he belongs to the syndrome of the self-reformed Staggerlee;  like Buju Banton, he's a  raggamuffin who turned Rasta. But Capleton's sanctimony doesn't sabotage his records because instead of soothing roots reggae visions of "one love", he concentrates on  Old Testament-style wrath and armageddon: Jah as the ultimate Enforcer, the Don of dons, smiting the corrupt and ungodly. The gloating relish with which he wields the brimstone imagery of divine retribution is as powerful as ragga's ultraviolence.  Capleton's righteousness and Elephant Man's ruthlessness are flipsides of  the same cultural coin as; God's fire simply replaces gun fire.  Even though he's a "good guy" now, Capleton still sounds like a rude boy.

Wake the Town and Tell the People: Dancehall Culture in Jamaica

Wake the Town and Tell the People: Dancehall Culture in Jamaica

by Norman C. Stolzoff

(Duke University Press)

Village Voice Literary Supplement, 2001

by Simon Reynolds

 

For a small island with a population barely more than two million, Jamaica has exerted a disproportionately vast influence on global pop. Beyond briefly touching upon his own conflicted passion for Rastafarian reggae as a white middle class teenager in California, though, Norman C. Stolzoff doesn't  deal with the music's impact outside its Caribbean home. His real interest is  probing dancehall's internal workings as a cultural economy, and examining why it is such a controversial phenomenon within Jamaica itself.

                What emerges in Wake the Town is a picture of Jamaican music as powerfully conditioned by economic forces, and of a native genius for transforming these constraints into creative opportunities. Sound systems, for instance, emerged in the 1950s when the tourist trade priced live bands out of the popular market. Thrift was partial inspiration for two crucial Jamaican innovations, dub's studio-as-instrument trickery and the re-using of rhythm tracks for different songs and vocalists; producers realized they only had to pay the session band for a single performance if they put dub versions on the B-side of singles or released "one riddim" albums. Similar implacable financial logic led to today's digital dancehall music, where computers and drum machines enabled the downsizing of human instrumentalists altogether.

                Stolzoff is not a flashy writer, and theoretically he offers few surprises, wielding the usual mish-mash of  cult-studs faves: Pierre Bourdieu's analysis of taste in terms of class distinction, Dick Hebdige-style subcultural decoding, Paul Gilroy's work  on hybridity. His conclusion is a tad inconclusive and sat-on-the-fence: there's good in dancehall (a vibrant vulgarity that resists the Eurocentric refinement of Jamaica's ruling class) and there's bad (virulent homophobia, misogyny, gun talk). Wake the Town's real strength is its field research, the vivid and precise details gleaned during the months the author spent  observing the Killamanjaro sound system in action, and hanging out at the Dub Store recording studio. Because they engage in "soundclashes" with each other, sound systems need a constant turnover of  fresh "dubplates" (exclusive pre-releases) to sway the crowd and slay their rivals. At the studios, there's a bustling trade in both killer and filler tunes, with established stars and hustling aspirants chanting patois-rich raps over whatever riddims are currently hot, and  "champion sounds" paying anything from US $25 to $3000 for each addition to their arsenals.

                The slanguage of the soundclash, with its "sound boy killers" and "burials," reflects not just the routine violence of Kingston where the homicide rate is three per day, but the dog-eat-dog struggle of capitalism's war of all against all--which is fiercer in this postcolonial corner of the globalized world than most elsewhere.  But although dancehall can appear to merely mirror and perpetuate "reality,"  the culture still contains flickers of utopian hope for a better way. Sound systems can cut from a rude-boy toast about murderation to a Rasta song about roots 'n' redemption in the blink of a cross-fader. In the selector's mix, these contradictions--glamorizing Babylon's ways versus dreaming of Zion--achieve an uneasy co-existence.

Ragga Round-Up column - Melody Maker 1994

 For the intrigued outsider, ragga provokes the same split response as gangsta rap. You can dig mightily the booty-coercing phuturism of the production, but wince and flinch when it comes to the ideology. Like gangsta, ragga lyrics are all guns, bitches and blunts.  Just as fogies lament gangsta & swingbeat as a degeneration from the olden golden days of soul and funk, similarly nostalgics see today's digital reggae as spiritually bankrupt compared to '70s roots and dub.  Certainly, Rastafarian militancy/mysticism has given way to a secular, solipsistic worldview, oscillating between sexism and sadism.  But sonically, Jamaican pop remains as creative and compelling as ever.

Judging dancehall/ragga by Shaggy or Chaka Demus is like thinking 2 Unlimited are all you need to know about techno.  The fierce, far out stuff is the hordcore--that's where you'll find the strangest, staccato-est beats, the starkest productions. "Ragga Ragga Ragga 2" (Greensleeves) is a good entry point for the uninitiated.  Ragga is reggae with its fluency turned to erectile rigour (one track here is called 'Spermrod'!). The key factors in this shift to stiff are 1/ digital technology 2/ Jamaica becoming a stop-over for the cocaine trade in the early '80s. And so ragga's sound--crisp and dry, all itchy'n'scratchy computer-game blips and fidgety tics of percussion--sounds like nothing so much as electro, while its palsied rhythms suggest coke-jitters rather than a marijuana-moonwalk.

Fierce competition to be fresher than the rest results in weird'n'wonderful production gimmicks, like the gastric-rumble bass-sounds on Papa San's "Sireen" or the mud-squelch noises on Red Dragon's "Burning Up" (which fit the lewd lyrics).  Like gangsta vis-a-vis '70s funk, sampling allows ragga to simultaneously pay homage and wreak iconoclastic damage to '70s reggae: on Saba Tooth's 'Warp Dem Girl', a tiny wisp of ethereal, rootsical keyboard floats amid the clanking machine-beat, while Lt. Stitchie's 'Wood Fire' is cyber-dub.  In fact, ragga is at once futuristic and atavistic: many of its rhythms come from African-based cult religions like Etu, Pocomania and Kumina.

     Another excellent introduction to dancehall is 'Ragga Sampler Volume 1' (Charm). The standout track is Buju Banton's 'Mind Behind The Wind', which slots the usual gruff, chest-puffed-out bragging amidst undulating tabla-like beats, oddly reminiscent of avant-funk visionary Arthur Russell's "Let's Go Swimming". Another highlight: Galaxy P's 'Hardcore', porno-ragga so hyped its rhythm-mechanism almost seizes up.  'Just Ragga, Volume 6' (Charm) showcases several examples of a new trend: duets like Jigsy King & Tony Curtis' 'Any Man Yu Want' which combine the hoarse, coarse vocal grain of ragga with swingbeat's sickly slickness. The contrast of rough lust and oily, unctuous pleading is interesting, and dancehall and new jack have obvious links, production-wise, but I prefer the pure ragga of the Spragga Benz tracks here: the Einsturzende-meets-martial-drums battery of 'Dem Flap', the squelchifarious twitch of 'Gi Wi Di Naany'.

Ragga has generated few artists capable of holding your interest for the length of an album.  On Terror Fabulous's 'Yaga Yaga' (East West), maestro Dave Kelly's production & beats are subtly inventive but soft-core, and the songs are sweetened with treacley harmonies.  Fab's persona is sort of ragga without the aggro: boastful, bawdy ('Water Bed Expert') but never brutal, a ragga LL Cool J instead of a Schoolly D.  Where's the Terror?  Still the album does git raw toward the end with 'Mr Big Man' and 'Broke Wine Butterfly', which reprise the epileptic anti-grooves of Buju Banton classics like 'Big It Up' and 'Bogle Dance'.

Much more unsound and exciting are Bounty Killer Versus Beenie Man's 'Guns Out' and Ninjaman's 'Hollow Point Bad Boy' (both Greensleeves). The ultra-minimal sound (both are produced by King Jammy) is as dessicated, skeletal and 2D as electro. Beenie's 'Off The Air Bad Boy' and Ninja's 'Write Your Will' each revive the famous Casio-synth B-line of 'Under Me Sleng Teng', the first electro-reggae hit, while Ninja's 'Wap Dem Bubba' is full of wikky-wikky voices.  As for the lyrics, they're relentlessly sociopathic, albeit leavened with a macabre wit ("Deadly Medley"). Ninja's "Hollow Point" takes its title from bullets designed to flatten on impact, mushroom through the body and inflict maximum internal damage (nice one, Ninj!), while he's barely two bars into 'Bad Boy Nuh Cub Scout' before he's namechecked Uzi and Tek 9 ("name brand gun!"). It's cartoon gangsta stuff, perhaps to be taken with a pinch of salt.

Beenie's 'Mobster' is just one of myriad ragga tunes sampled by that strain of jungle I call gangsta-rave. So finally, a word for 'Jungle Hits Volume 1' (Street Tuff), which scoops up most of the ragga-jungle cuts that count, from General Levy's roisterous 'Incredible' to Shy FX's bloodcurdling 'Original Nuttah' and 'Gangster Kid'. The compilation's in the Top 3 Album Chart as I write--no doubt about it, this is '90s pop, the sound of young Black Britain. 

Tougher than Tough (Island box set, 1995)

REGGAE

Spin column, 1995

    So much of the fabric of modern pop originates in reggae.  Dub's ganga-delic echo-effects anticipated the remix-mania of today's club music, while the slurred gibberish of "DJ talkover" is one of the sources of rap.  Right now, dancehall's ragga chants and fidgety production is influencing emergent British genres like Apache Indian's "bhangramuffin" and "jungle" (a manic offshoot of techno). And I have a farfetched theory that the yodelling falsetto of Morrissey (who once declared "reggae is vile") has secret links with the milky chirruping of Junior Byles and Barrington Levy.

    "Tougher Than Tough: The Story Of Jamaican Music" (Mango/Island) traces the evolution of reggae from 1958 to the present. It starts with the 78 rpm proto-ska of the Folkes Brothers' "Oh Carolina" and ends - four discs and 95 tracks later - with Shaggy's 1993 ragga- remake of the same song.  Reggae's roots lie in American soul and R&B, but as with most pop breakthroughs, mimicry led to mutation, as Black American dance was subtly warped in synch with the Caribbean vibe. Ska's jerky pulse and rocksteady's chugging grooves both have the same monochrome sound and upful aura as Wilson Pickett or Booker T & The MG's, but Jamaican musicians shifted emphasis from the downbeat to the 'afterbeat', and thus created a New Thing.

     As rocksteady evolved into roots reggae and dub, the Jamaican elements became more defined: the bass became more pronounced and melodic, while producers like King Tubby and Lee Perry used reverb to heighten the music's spatiality.  In the '80's, reggae went digital, just like US black pop from swingbeat to rap. But dancehall, argues Linton Kwesi Johnson in the box set's hefty booklet, is at oncefuturistic and primal: a cyber-pagan resurrection of the ritual beats favoured by African cults like Etu and Kumina.  What Johnson and other commentators shy away from is the role of drugs.  Most crucial shifts in pop history have occurred when drugs interface with technology to make possible new forms of listening.  Just as psychedelia coincided with the arrival of LSD and stereo/24 track sound, similarly 70's dub had everything to do with marijuana's heightening of sonic dimension and depth.  In the Eighties, Jamaica became a stop-over in the cocaine trade routes; this probably has a lot to do with ragga's jittery beats, apopletic vocals and gangsta vibe.  Throughout its history, reggae has oscillated between two extremes, symbolised by the "rude boy" and the "natty dread": between macho swagger and mellow spirituality, ghetto survivalism and Rasta dreams of escaping to a halcyon homeland (Zion).

    Crammed with great songs, Disc 4 agitates against the notion that reggae declined musically in the Eighties as the fire of militant spirituality faded.  Nonetheless, Disc 3 surpasses the rest, covering reggae's commercial and aesthetic zenith from 1975-81, and ranging from the luscious pop of Gregory Isaacs and Sugar Minott to the apocalyptic dread of Willie Williams' "Armagideon Time" and Max Romeo's "War In A Babylon". While the bubbling rhythms of Black Uhuru and Junior Delgado are dub-inflected, there's not enough pure dub here for me. Why no Augustus Pablo, Prince Far I, King Tubby or Mad Professor?  Then again, as Island supremo Chris Blackwell points out, Jamaica has the highest per capita rate of musical output in the world. Inevitably, as massive as it is, this compilation could only scratch the surface.  Which it does quite superbly