Dub Techno

Article by Alex 10 Jan 2012

Dub techno (techno made through the prism of dub) reached amazing heights with a small group of recordings from 90s Germany but has since descended into nothing but derivative drivel. It is these records and those that influenced them that i will focus on rather than the artists who continue to drag dub techno’s once good name through the mud.

Going back to the beginning, dub (as a genre and process) originated in the musical studios of late 60s Kingston, Jamaica with artists such as Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and King Tubby.

This group of producers looked at the studio mixing desk as an instrument and would subtract and change elements of existing tracks to create widely different versions. This approach was unique in that it was the first pop music development which took away rather than added sounds to make something new.

These ideas would later pop up in pretty much every subsequent musical genre from hip-hop to post-punk to post rock but I’ll skip ahead to 90s Germany and how a group of techno enthusiasts added dub techniques to techno to create dub techno.

Moritz Von Oswald and Mark Ernestus as Basic Channel defined dub techno as a sound. They took influence from the emerging sound of minimal techno from the likes of Rob Hood and Richie Hawtin and added to that some dub-inflected syncopated synth pads to create dub techno.

Other artists of the time produced amazing records using a similar approach and sound pallet such as Porter Ricks (whose classic album Biokinetics” has recently been reissued and i am going to buy once i’ve finished writing this) and Substance.

Of course, as with all genres, once the sound became vaguely fashionable many copycats jumped on board, knocked out some quick copies and sullied the genre’s once flawless name. We will however choose not to think about them and instead just listen to the greats.

Tags: music