Amoeba Music

Celebrate the release of Dub Revolution: Jamaica's Sonic Innovators and the Birth of Remix Culture (White Rabbit) with author David Katz at Amoeba SF on Friday, September 11th at 5pm! David will be in conversation with local DJ Andrew Rush (AKA Natural Selector), who will then spin an all-vinyl set. Unfortunately, the books will not be on hand to sign today, but will be available for pre-order.

The most abstract, playful, and confounding of reggae subgenres, dub is a vital component of sound system culture that has wielded disproportionate influence. Emerging as an underground phenomenon in Kingston during the early 1970s, dub was wrought by sonic alchemists such as King Tubby, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Prince Jammy, and Scientist, conjuring musical mutations at the mixing desk. Dub reached other lands through the Jamaican diaspora and as Lloyd "Bullwackie" Barnes furthered the form in New York, Dennis Bovell, Mad Professor, and Adrian Sherwood conjured their own dub masterworks in London, Jah Shaka and his acolytes subsequently helping dub to achieve global reach. Widely adopted by post- punk producers and later a crucial influence on the underground dance music scenes of several continents, dub indelibly changed the techniques and aesthetics of music production with far-reaching effects; it's no exaggeration to say that without dub, there would be no hip- hop or house music.

Dub is made from studio trickery, its auteurs fashioning something new by subtraction rather than addition, reversing standard recording techniques. It is a music of absence and deception, a ghostly sonic doppelganger with bass primacy and torpedoed song structures, full of holes and unexpected twists. The evolution of dub marks the birth of the remix and the emergence of the studio as an instrument in itself, a place where songs can be pulled apart and given wild reshaping, rendering a disembodied new form that is often cosmic and typically jagged. Dub's progression is also inseparable from the troubled history of post- colonial Jamaica, blighted by caustic Cold War interventions, attendant gang culture and communal breakdowns. Through first-hand testimony with dub's most noteworthy creatives, David Katz's monumental forensic history, Dub Revolution: Jamaica's Sonic Innovators and the Birth of Remix Culture, stands as the authoritative book on a musical art form that continues to fascinate, generation after generation.

David Katz is an author, documentary producer, and DJ born in San Francisco and is a long-time resident of London. He is the author of People Funny Boy: The Genius of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and Solid Foundation: An Oral History of Reggae. Katz has written about the sounds and culture of Jamaica since 1984. His work has appeared in various music books and periodicals, including the Guardian, Mojo, and the Wire.