Sound System International Dub LP

A phenomenal early dub LP that few reggae fans were even aware of before its reissue by Pressure Sounds, Sound System International features a collection of illuminating early productions from King Tubby, one of dub’s inventors and foremost practitioners. Before Tubby gained more widespread fame with his spacy, often-hallucinatory mixes for Bunny Lee, Augustus Pablo, and others, he produced these 15 more elementary (but no less remarkable) mixes, transforming solid instrumental tracks from Clancy Eccles’ studio outfit The Dynamites into spacious, echo-laden dub. Tubby was never as showy a producer as some of his peers, and his mixes here demonstrate his characteristic restraint and good taste. Rather than drowning these instrumentals in superfluous effects, he pares them down to their bare minimum, emphasizing the taut interplay between bass and drums before letting the full arrangements dramatically reveal themselves at unexpected moments. A few of the tracks here are enlivened by clever rhymes by charismatic deejay King Stitt, but for the most part the focus is firmly on Tubby’s phenomenal mixing skills.