For this Sunday Classic we have taken the trip to the heavy heavy sounds of 18 Dromilly Avenue in western Kingston for thirty miraculous minutes with The Dubmaster, King Tubby.

Osbourne Ruddock - as he was born in Kingston, Jamaica - had a profound impact on bass music and culture under his regal nom du plume, King Tubby. We could have picked pretty much any point in his amazing and esteemed discography to cover as a classic, so we just went with the one that first turned us on, his 1975 The Roots of Dub (a.k.a. Presents the Roots of Dub); the second LP under the King Tubby name, originally released on Jamaica’s Total Sounds records.

Tubby (he actually cut quite a svelte silhouette) had risen to prominence in Kingston through his Soundsystem, “King Tubby’s Hometown Hi-fi”. Arriving primarily via an interest in electronics, he had carefully sculpted the biggest and baddest rig around, notable for its volume, crystal clarity and also the finest dubplates. It was the whole scene. The complete package!
His Soundsystem had led to record production, initially working for producer Duke Reid and creating instrumental "version" cuts. Using early sonic effects, he pioneered the new dub sound and The Roots of Dub was pretty seminal stuff.

The album collects a series of dubs (in effect, remixes) of original Bunny Lee-produced hits, already super-charged rhythms courtesy of the hit squad Aggrovators band. The tape was full of gold, but Tubby’s unique engineering skills produced something almighty and took them on a warbling and reverberating trip into space.
The Roots of Dub is a celebration of experimentalism and such prime cuts of innovative production craft. Although it sounds quite minimal by today's standards, it established the trifecta of echo, reverb and the high-pass filter to create something totally new and sonically distinctive. It’s also important to recognise the impact Tubby’s sound had on broader bass music culture over the last fifty years.

Everything from the fisheye shot of Tubby’s studio on the cover to the tangible sense of shaking speaker cabs gives this set such a killer vibe. King Tubby arranged a new vision of where he wanted to take reggae and more broadly, sound design.

Play it as loud as you possibly can.





Further Reading

David Katz’s beginner’s guide to King Tubby, the producer who turned dub into an art form for Fact, is a really great read.