ENTITY · GENRE / STYLE
Dub
Well supported
The remix before the word existed: Jamaican engineers of the early 1970s — King Tubby foremost, with Lee Perry, Errol Thompson and their successors — stripped the vocal from a rhythm and rebuilt what remained live at the desk, drums and bass forward, fragments of voice and horns drenched in reverb and delay. It began as B-side economics and became a form in its own right, and its fingerprints are on remix culture, hip hop instrumentals, jungle, dubstep and every music that treats the studio as an instrument.
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What people argued about this record — two documented positions each time, kept apart from verified fact. Browse every argument in the archive →
Who invented dub: the engineer at the desk or the producer who commissioned it?
One side
King Tubby the engineer as creator of dub
The other
The producers who commissioned and directed the versions
A documented question of authorship around the birth of dub, framed neutrally and concerning figures now deceased: one account credits King Tubby, the engineer whose electronics and desk technique made the sound, as dub's creator; another emphasises the producers, such as Bunny Lee, who commissioned and directed the version B-sides. Stated as an open historical debate, taking no side.
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