Dennis Bovell - Wise Music In Dub (Wise Records)

It’s been forty-five years since reggae producer Dennis Bovell took Dub Band stalwarts Nick Straker and John Kpiaye, together with Aswad’s rhythm section, into Gooseberry studios to record the classic I Wah Dub. That album sealed Dennis’ reputation as the UK’s foremost dub master, but the genial 72 year old has barely stopped to draw breath ever since. Driven by restless creativity and a musical curiosity so far-ranging that words like “diverse” and “eclectic” simply cannot do them justice, he’s carved himself an incomparable niche in the annals of world music. Reggae fans love him for his hits with Matumbi, Janet Kay and Linton Kwesi Johnson, and so too punks and new wavers because of his exploits with the Slits, Thompson Twins, the Pop Group and Madness. Dig a little deeper and you’ll also find the likes of Fela Kuti, Alpha Blondy, the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Hawaiian surfers on his remarkable CV, which is brought bang up to date with the release of Wise Music In Dub.  

I was grateful to be invited to write the liner notes for this landmark album, and would like to thank Marcus Wise and of course Dennis himself for their time and consideration in making my own contributions possible.

Here are the opening paragraphs of my liner notes, which appear on the inner sleeve of the vinyl editions.

Dub music was born in the recording studios of downtown Kingston during the early seventies. It was a revolutionary style of mixing that caused great excitement, and ultimately changed the face of popular music. Dennis Bovell, whose wit, talent and imagination is legendary, took to it immediately but no one believed dub from the UK was equal to that flooding out of Jamaica on white label 45s with jukebox sized holes in them. True to form, Dennis was having none of it. As an experiment, he pressed up his next batch of dub records to look exactly the same and when DJs played them, thinking they were from Jamaica, the doors to a lasting appreciation of UK reggae and dub music were thrown wide open.

 Fifty years’ worth of classic recordings later including ‘I Wah Dub,’ ‘Brain Damage’ and those made with the 4^th Street Orchestra, the UK’s Grand Wizard of dub is again at his best on ‘Wise Music In Dub.’ By blurring the distinctions between dub, vocal and instrumental music, he’s breathed new life into a genre that was in danger of becoming predictable. “I had to prove that I was in front and not looking back when it came to the dub stakes, so I pulled out all the stops,” he says proudly. Even the choice of songs is a revelation, after Marcus Wise invited him to choose material from the label’s impressive range of catalogues.

 “Dennis has made essential contributions to the evolution of dub and British music in general,” notes Marcus, who remodelled his West End studio specially for these sessions. “We worked together to reintroduce iconic tracks that had never been performed as dub versions, or reggae songs. We did a lot of research, but one of the main things we set out to achieve was to showcase some of the most talented voices and instrumentalists in British reggae today. That was the impetus behind this record and for the most part, everybody who contributed to this record was British Caribbean.”