Dub Your Brains Out
Various Artists
Victory World
Dub, the progenitor of damned near everything electronic, has been around a mighty long time and has undergone many different manifestations (for the freakiest fronts, you need to check out Mad Professor and Williams Traffic). And punk label Victory (by scouring the RAS catalogue) has offered up an interesting – though uneven – compilation under its new World imprint. Dub Your Brains Out is a fair representation of all that is right and wrong with reggae, in general.
The compilation starts with a too-‘80s-sounding Culture cut, “To Go Where No Dub Has Gone Before.” It’s a bit of a clunker, and, to better represent the man’s talent, they come back with the much better “Intergalactic Excursion.” We get some dub “old school” with Bunny Wailer’s “Battering Down Dub” and Augustus Pablo’s “Omega Africa.” The darkest piece has to be Sizzla and Ninjaman’s “Look Who is Laughing Dub.” Gregory Isaacs’ “House of the Rising Dub” is a rock/pop experiment mixed by Jim Fox that just plays wrong. However, Peter Broggs’ “International Dub” is a nice, mellow sway, and Gondwana (whose appeal I’ve never quite understood) delivers a pleasant surprise with “Gracias Jah Jah Dub.”
As you can see, they’ve assembled an impressive roster of some of reggae’s brightest stars. Black Uhuru, Luciano, Yellowman, and Mystic Revealers also appear on the disc. The problem with reggae and this disc is that even its best and brightest have been known to turn out dull and mediocre work.
Victory World: http://www.victoryworld.net
