Various Artists Studio One Space-Age Dub Special

Label: Soul Jazz Records
Released: 24th March 2023

Format Info

2x LP

Most of these tracks are taken from Studio One’s superb long out-of-print series of dub albums released between 1974 and 1980, such as Zodiac Sounds, Ital Sounds and System, Roots Dub, Dub Store Special, Juks Incorporation and others. Many of these classic dub albums were originally released only in Jamaica in shortrun pressings with special silk-screen printed sleeves, all with striking minimal designs, and which now fetch many, many hundreds of pounds.

These tracks, credited to the Dub Specialist, use the original music tracks to seminal Studio One rhythms, which are broken down, reconstructed, and manipulated using the studio mixing desk as an instrument. With these albums, producer Clement Dodd and engineer Sylvan Morris helped create some of the finest dubs ever known.

The cover shows Clement ‘Sir Coxsone’ Dodd in orbit, an image inspired by DJ Lone Ranger‘s 1982 Badda Dan Dem album for Studio One, the cover of which portrays Sir Coxsone at the controls of a spaceship with the DJ in space.

The tracks on Studio One Space-Age Dub Special are mainly instrumental cuts with occasional snippets of original vocals brought into the mix. Lone Ranger’s complete vocals feature on A Lie Gal A Tell, a superb six minutes plus dubbed out piece of musical madness. Also included are a selection of rare dub versions that only ever appeared on rare singles.