By: John

John — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 05:28:08 +0000

I’ve heard this. I’m a big fan of reggae and dub. This is fairly dismal. The Wailers’ music, for various reasons, doesn’t lend itself well to dub, and most of what’s here lacks the character or perversity or joy of great dub – it mostly plays it safe. (One of the reasons the Wailers did so well with non-Jamaican audiences is that their mixes were deliberately made similar to “rock” mixes, their rhythms generally took a deep backseat to the melody / guitar and they eschewed a certain claustrophobia that much reggae enjoys and much dub relies upon. Several of the tracks here were dubiously remixed sometime between Marley’s death and today, and most of the decent (and I stress “decent” – nothing here is great) tracks are on CDs most Marley fans would have already. “Smile Jamaica (version),” for instance, is on the remaster of “Kaya.”

If you listen to as much reggae as you do “rock,” you will gradually realize that the Wailers are in many ways more like a (soft) rock band than roots reggae (lyrical concerns and semiotic musical motifs aside.) Dub can pretty fairly be considered the heaviest subset of reggae. In terms of results, Marley In Dub is roughly like James Taylor In Dub. That’s no diss to either artist, just a way of expressing the slim odds that anyone’s really going to enjoy this . . . it just doesn’t work well.

Don’t bother with this one.

Comments on: Lively Up Yourself: Marley’s Dub Mixes Released on CD by Island

By: John