Chapter 43: Dub Down In The Sun, and Get Something For Nothing
In which I share some more dub from the archives, and try not to panic about Easter holidays.
I am writing this in a frantic rush as I have about 40 minutes before I return to the gates of a school holiday club.
If you follow me on Bluesky, Instagram etc, you probably already know my two big bits of radio news over the last week, but if not, the first was about the latest episode of my Soho Radio show The Rough Guide To Rongorongoland in which I had an in depth chat with Miss Gloria Jones about her incredible career from her gospel roots in LA, through soul, funk, glam-rock, and onto Brit-disco.
As for the second bit of radio news, despite delivering the aforementioned show which was arguably pretty fucking good, I was unceremoniously dropped from the Soho Radio roster the following day. As you might expect, I’m pretty gutted, but on the up side, the show is currently at number 8 in Mixcloud’s interview chart. So if you haven’t listened already, please give it a blast, and spread the word because reaching number 1 would lighten the load, just a little.
Aside shit news, and the already chaotic Easter holidays, it’s royalty time once again, and while I wait to find out what riches have been bestowed upon my niche dancehall work over the past 6 months—my Duppy Writer royalties just came through: £27.78!—I thought I’d delve into the dubby depths of my archives for another unreleased offering.
This one was the first of many dub productions for Django Django who got in touch in 2015 asking if I’d be up for remixing the arpeggiating synth-bop of ‘First Light’. Of course I was up for it, I was already a fan, and set about making a kind of psychedelic bashment version. They liked the vocal mix, but Dave Maclean from the band requested one of my dubs, and, never one to turn down the opportunity to go wild with some space echo, I began dismantling what I’d previously made, contorting it into something even less marketable than it probably was already.
That same week, my girlfriend’s cousin invited us over to dinner at his flat in Stamford Hill where we could hear the muffled words of a young MC spitting bars downstairs. It turned out they were living in a very musical building, with another musician living on the ground floor—“a drummer. You might’ve heard of him. He’s in a band called Django Django”.
What were the chances?
I texted Dave. I think it was something vague like “I’m upstairs”. Confusion ensued because the band were in the studio. Eventually he returned home, three sheets to the wind, and gave us a knock. I think he’d assumed there was a party going on, rather than a nice family meal which had just ended.
Anyway, I delivered the new dub mix along with vocal and instrumental versions a few days later, and left the rest to the label. A few months passed, and then the 12” dropped through the door which is always exciting, however jaded I might sound from this business. I eagerly split the wrapping, unsheathed the wax and placed it on the turntable, dropping the needle on my track which was credited as the dub mix; they hadn’t used the others, but it was the best of the bunch so, here we go…
Someone had pressed up the instrumental! No vocals. No space echo tomfoolery. Just a tool really; something I mostly send in case an extra track is needed for the release, and I guess just to be thorough.
It came out to little fanfare, just an odd psych-dancehall rhythm on an EP which boasted decent dance floor mixes from Mickey Pearce and Ghost Culture. Regardless I continued dropping the dub mix in my sets, and used it a couple of times live with the Ragga Twins, including a spot on Pyro Radio which was caught on camera…
There was briefly talk of a possible Record Store Day release with the Ragga Twins doing their thing on one side, and the unreleased dub mix on the flip, but like a lot of my projects, it didn’t happen, and it has languished on a hard drive ever since. Sometimes I’ve floated the idea of a comp of these unreleased mixes, but I’ve never found anyone perhaps mad enough to splash out, and I sure as hell can’t afford to press it up. If I save up those royalty cheques from Duppy Writer, I might be able to finally get it into production around the end of the century when I turn 125.
Until then, I’ve given my dub mix a little tweak with 2 new versions which my beloved full subscribers amongst you can grab on either MP3 or WAV below, and if you’ve not heard them before, I continued to work with Django Django supplying Marble Dubs which accompanied their 4th album in 2018, an Expanding Space Dub of their 2021 single ‘Free From Gravity’, and the first ever remix of Self Esteem who’s debut single came out on Dave’s Kick & Clap label back in 2017.
