THE DREAD & FRED STORY________________________________by Pete Murder Tone
At the age of 16/17 in Bedford, UK, Dread linked up with his brother Fred and started to lay
down
bassline tracks with a simple Boss drum machine, playing percussion and bongos on top,
with a
borrowed Yamaha DX7 to compliment the hard core dub.
In 1988 they got four dubplates of their unique material pressed and took them to Jah Shaka.
Shaka played the dub plates for around a month and then called up and told them to come to
his
next sound system session down in Cheggars Hall / London. He always played his best or
most
exclusive song last - this night he played 'Warrior Dub' - now known as 'WARRIOR
STANCE' and
it
took the roof off the building... Shaka that night requested that the dub plate
should be released
on his own label.
“Warrior Stance” sold well and was tremendously influential on the
new wave of UK dub, as
Dougie Wardrop (Centry, Bush Chemists,
Conscious Sounds and tens of other aliases) recalled
in an interview
with Guidelight Movement:
"Basically I got started on a small 4-track, cassette machine which I had
in my friends house, [...] we started from nothing really. Just going to
(Jah) Shaka, Manasseh. Listening to tunes and hearing tunes like Dread
and Fred.
Tunes like "Warriors Stance". Until then there were no real
steppers, digital
steppers really. "Warrior Stance" to me was the one
that stood out and made me
wanna say whoa! That was the tune. I'd
like to make music like that, you know. "
In an interview with Jah Warrior Russ D (The Disciples) also cited its
impact :
"Originally we only used a drum machine the rest was all live
playing, the thing
that changed it all was seeing
Shaka
working
in a studio in Brixton, it had a small
programming room
with about 6/7 Yamaha DX7's linked up
to a
sequencer
and a
couple of small Seck mixers, he was working with this guy he
called Andy Mozart,
and the
rhythms
that they were
building
sounded crisp and different more machine
like.
Also at the
time Dread and Fred came on
the
scene with
'Warrior Stance'
and I will always
cite that record as an influence...
I went home
and started
programming
my drum
machine (HR16)
differently from then, away from sounding
live and more
into the machine
mode."
The Warrior Stance 12" release had so much success that Shaka
decided to release an album,
'IRONWORKS' (named after their now
eight track studio in Bedford), another success. Dread &
Fred sadly
split up in 1998 after producing several more records for Shaka,
Blackamix and their
own label. Dread has continued to build roots
tunes as Dread Connexion since then.
PS: the Warrior Stance 12” and Dread & Fred LPs have been
repressed by Jah Shaka and are
thankfully available again.
Hear Pete's excellent 'WARRIOR's DANCE'-mixtape full with raw early UK digital roots and dub
from the same era HERE!
