Joe Gibbs Presents 100 Years Of Dub

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 Melodys 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 songs funkiness. Then again, Gibbs uses a heavy hand on "Informer Version," a frantically psychedelic rendering of Cultures 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