King Tubby and the remix

A one-off acetate cut for a single sound system — originally a test pressing, then the core weapon of clash culture. A sound commissions an artist to voice a custom version of a known tune naming that sound, and plays it as an exclusive nobody else can answer. The dubplate turns a record into a possession, and its economy sustains a whole layer of the business.

Scientist is the working name of Hopeton Overton Brown (born 1960), a Jamaican dub engineer who rose to prominence in the early 1980s. A protege of King Tubby, who gave him the nickname, he learned mixing at Tubby's studio before working at Channel One and Tuff Gong. He is celebrated for a run of themed dub albums such as Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires (1981), recorded with the Roots Radics for producer Henry "Junjo" Lawes.

Osbourne "King Tubby" Ruddock's sound system, run from Waterhouse and the room where dub was effectively invented. Tubby, an electronics engineer who built and maintained his own amplifiers, began cutting instrumental versions with parts dropping in and out, adding reverb and delay live at the controls — first as exclusive plates for his own dances, then as a form in its own right that reshaped record production worldwide.

Osbourne Ruddock (1941-1989), the Waterhouse electronics engineer who invented dub. He built and repaired amplifiers, ran his own Hometown Hi-Fi sound, and began cutting versions with parts dropping in and out, drenched in reverb and delay worked live at the controls — first as exclusive plates for his own dances, then as a form in its own right. He trained Scientist, Prince Jammy and others, and his approach to the mixing desk as an instrument reshaped record production worldwide. He was shot dead outside his home in 1989.

In the studios of 1970s Kingston, engineers learned to dismantle a finished song and rebuild it as something stranger, launching the version, the remix and the idea of the producer as author.

How the B-side and the mixing desk became instruments.

From a 1947 shop-front amplifier to King Tubby's workshop, engineers built the sound system before anyone sang through it.

At Waterhouse and Maxfield Avenue, the mixing engineer stopped being a technician and became an author.