I Wah Dub

"Blackbeard" is the recording and production moniker of Brixton's Dennis Bovell. Bovell was instrumental in the flourishing of reggae in Brixton in the late '70s, and in England at large. Working with Linton Kwesi Johnson, Misty in Roots, the Pop Group, Rip Rig & Panic, Black Uhuru, and the Slits, he helped to create a fertile, multicultural scene where not only reggae, but post-punk exploded and interpolated. I Wah Dub is his second full-length recording as a leader. Originally released on the More Cut label in 1980, it was Bovell's attempt to give his deep Lee Perry and King Tubby obsessions serious vent in a studio. Bovell plays guitar on all but one track, bass, and keyboards of all stripes. The band includes Jah Bunny and Drummie Zeb, among others. The music was recorded in London at the Gooseberry Studio and sound effects were added at Abbey Road. This is a brief record even by the standards of the day, a scant 27-minutes in length over eight cuts — it is all but completely instrumental — the track "'Nough" contains tape manipulation s of indecipherable voices that are either slowed to "screwed & chopped" proportions or inflated by helium high-pitches. But it's the rhythms that make the tracks, and Bovell understands the deep dread dub-like nobody's business — one wonders what the Clash's Sandinista! might have sounded like with him instead of Mikey Dread at the controls. The sounds are threaded through a deep, basic, nocturnal mix, where bass and drums slur and swirl instead of pop. Guitars chug and then drop out, keyboards underscore a line here and there or get played backwards, echoing into the cavernous abyss. Along with the Dub Factor by Black Uhuru and Johnson's LKJ in Dub, only Adrian Maxwell Sherwood's Creation Rebel albums could hold a candle to this piece of dark, twisting, utterly melodic dread reggae. A masterpiece.