I think I’m starting to run out of barely-known acts from the 80s and 90s to write about. I’ve gone pretty deep down the new wave/dance/electronic rabbit holes, but are there any acts out there you all would recommend that I haven’t yet featured on this blog? Any suggestions would be appreciated. I’m trying to get more into 90s dance music, but there’s just so much of it! I love acid house and trance, if that’s any help to anyone thinking of recommendations.

Tonight’s post is all “dub,” a genre whose defining aural charactistics are as mysterious to me as its name. I only know that these tracks are dub because the Internet tells me it is true.

What makes these songs dub? The basslines? The general “grooviness” of them? Their instrumental passages? And what the hell does dub have in common with dubstep? How the hell did that connection form? Reggae has about as much in common with Skrillex as baroque pop has with Mastodon.

Dreadzone
Zion Youth (Dreadzone Mix)
Zion Youth (Digidub Mix)
Zion Youth (Underworld Mix)
Zion Youth (Dan Donovan Mix)
Dreadzone is a dub/reggae/electronic group comprised mostly of former Big Audio Dynamite members, including Dan Donovan and Greg Roberts. When you consider the fact that I own every single release Big Audio Dynamite (II) ever put out, the fact that I had never even heard Dreadzone until I picked up this 12″ single last week is pretty amazing. It’s less amazing when you consider the fact that I don’t really like reggae.Don’t get me wrong, after listening to a bit of their music I’m convinced that Dreadzone are very good at what they do – it’s just not my scene. However, if I smoked weed this shit would probably sound amazing.

Even if you don’t like dub/reggae I recommend checking out the Underworld mix, since it basically transforms the track into an above-average mid-90s rave tune. In fact, I suspect they reused much of their work on this remix for their own track, “King of Snake,” a few years later. It certainly sounds familiar to that legendary track.

Beats International
Won’t Talk About It (12″ Norman Cook Mix)
Won’t Talk About It (7″ Norman Cook Mix)
Won’t Talk About It (12″ One Big Bad World Mix)
Won’t Talk About It (12″ Frankie Foncett Mix)
Won’t Talk About It (7″ Beats International Theme)
Beats International was the first dance music vehicle for Norman Cook (AKA Fatboy Slim) after his days as the bass player for The Housemartins, but before his days as Freak Power, Pizzaman, The Mighty Dub Katz or whatever other horrible name he went by for five minutes in the mid-90s. That’s an interesting bit of music trivia, but what I find to be much more of an interesting tidbit about Beats International is that they employed a graffiti artist as a band member. This person’s only job was to spray paint shit on the stage during live shows.

And I thought that The Mighty Mighty Bosstones were the only band to have members whose sole purpose was to do stupid shit on stage. The Internet, read it, you’ll learn shit. Not important shit, mind you, but hey, beats working.

These are all excellent mixes of a great tune. I especially love the “One Big Bad World Mix,” as it has a pretty awesome intro. The “7” Beats International Theme” mix is pretty great too, although its propensity for using record scratches as a backbeat totally wreaked havoc with my scratch-removal software.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 14th, 2011 at 12:28 am and is filed under Beats International, Dreadzone, Fatboy Slim. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.