Jamaican producer
Joe Gibbs was formative in shaping the sound of reggae throughout the 1970s and beyond, with him and partner
Errol Thompson (collectively known as "
The Mighty Two") sculpting enormously successful tracks for
Althea & Donna,
Prince Far I,
Dennis Brown, and many other reggae greats in the golden era of the mid-'70s. The lengthy compilation
100 Years of Dub focuses not on the
Gibbs-produced vocal tracks that drew the most attention during his prime years, but the instrumental dub versions that often accompanied the singles on the flip sides of their respective 45 releases. Though
Gibbs was more widely known for his ability to craft hit songs, his style as a dub remixer is equally strong, and gets a proper overview on
100 Years of Dub. The collection features 48 dub mixes of some of the biggest songs he had a hand in, with 30 of them making their first appearances on any format besides the original vinyl. Unlike his contemporaries like
King Tubby or
Lee "Scratch" Perry,
Gibbs' dub style is oftentimes relatively reserved, opting to hone in on little details and nuanced shifts in sound rather than work in wide swoops or thunderous crashes of reverb. "Dub in the Morning" (a dub take on
Bobby Melody's blissful "Jah Bring I Joy in the Morning") is skeletal and direct, dropping in segments of vocal harmonies and subtly dubbing out slivers of guitar. "Dread Problems," a reworking of
the Echoes' lovely vocal tune "Problems in Being a Dread," dips the original in a stew of delay but keeps things minimal to enhance the song's funkiness. Then again,
Gibbs uses a heavy hand on "Informer Version," a frantically psychedelic rendering of
Culture's 1977 song "Jah Jah See Dem A Come." The entire song is coated in dizzying amounts of phaser, sounding almost as if
Gibbs had just gotten a new effect and was using this particular dub to test its limits. "Earthquake (Satisfaction Version)" lands somewhere between the straightforward and the experimental, with spaceship-like synthesizer and feedback sounds invading an otherwise lazy riddim.
100 Years of Dub is a welcome slice of somewhat overlooked dub history, with a deeper inspection of
Gibbs' exploratory remixing approaches adding a new perspective to the sometimes overwhelming annals of '70s dub. ~ Fred Thomas
![Catch a Fire [50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0602455659835_p0_v1_s90x140.jpg "Catch a Fire [50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition]")
