Product Description

Since Black Uhuru is, with the possible exception of the original Wailers, the most famous vocal group in reggae history, a full dub album might seem an odd career choice. But 1983's THE DUB FACTOR is one of the decade's finest dub efforts. With classic reggae voices like those of Michael Rose and Puma Jones at hand, it's no wonder producers/bandleaders SlyDunbar and Robbie Shakespeare use more vocals than are common in dub.
The vocals are treated as accents, or processed beyond recognition (as on the wild "Android Rebellion"). This leaves the focus squarely on Sly and Robbie's staggeringbass/drum interplay and on the inventive keyboards of WallyBadarou. His unique synthesizer style has been so widely used and imitated that, by decade's end, it was almost a cliche. THE DUB FACTOR, however, remains as fresh and exciting asit sounded the year of its release.

Track Listing

1. Ion Storm
2. Youth
3. Big Spliff
4. Boof N Baff N Biff
5. Puffed Out
6. Android Rebellion
7. Apocalypse
8. Back Breaker
9. Sodom
10. Slaughter

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3212 in Music
• Released on: 2003-02-20
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 39 minutes

Customer Reviews

Dazed and Daring
I remember the first time I met someone else who also knew this album. That was about 20 years ago in France, and the bloke was a Punk bloke with the most extreme look and a pronounced taste for very hardcore music. For some reason he was at my place for a party and at some point I played this album. That certainly got his attention as he already knew and loved this album and we struck a lasting immediate friendship there and then.

I think this is the moct important thing about this album. It transcends the closed up Dub world to a larger experimental world of open minded people. The production is impeccable, and it certainly will twist your mind when you have smoked a few too many spliffs, but even now that I have not been smoking for so long I still love this album for how dazed and daring it is.

Blow Those Speakers
This is speaker shredding dub. This is dub taken into the 21st century, 17 years before the end of the 20th one. If you love dub, you'll already have this. If you're curious to find out what dub is all about, this is a good place to start. There's real imagination, real vision and real bass heavy frequencies here.

Nuclear meltdown - inna dub plate style!
The Dub Factor is one of the hardest most astonishing dub albums ever to be released. Almost 2 decades ago Paul "Groucho" Smykle captured some of Uhurus's ruffest tracks from the early 80s, smuggled them into the top secret laboratories of The Fallout Shelter in London and remixed the hell out of them to create a powerful and disturbing apocalyptic journey into the deepest and darkest realms of heavyweight drum and bass. Along the way you will hear echoing into infinity the sharp, piercing, tribal tones of Michael Rose, fused with the amorphous, spectral harmonies of Puma Jones and Duckie Simpson, all of which interweaving ten ballistically turbo-charged riddims blasted onto your soundscape with uncompromising power by Sly Drum-bar and Robbie Bass-spear. Smykle went on to perfect his unusual mixing techniques on a later project entitled "A Dub Experience" for Sly & Robbie, an album which could be considered The Dub Factor Volume II since it continues in much the same futuristic vein - albeit without the stunning vocal dexterities of Uhuru which make this album so unique. An absolute MUST.