Click to see SOUL
between the bits!
Well, to say it short, DIGITAL LAPTOP REGGAE is nothing else but Reggae music
produced with a computer. Or, to make it more clear, DLR first of all follows only
two basic rules:
But then - at a closer look - our music is strictly DUB, which used the basic
elements reggae brought, took them to a (at the time of its creation) completely new
dimension and by this accomplishing something that all electronic music that came
afterwards is deeply based upon: it unlinks the music from the song. The classical
song structure of verse and refrain, that can always be found in popsongs, doesn't
exist in DUB. The structuring is done with SOUND, and sound only. The RIDDIM is the
foundation, with the BASS as the most important element and due to the riddim's
looplike character is extremely hypnotic. Thus DUB very often is a meditation on
sound, which modulates time and space within a track. It is maybe comparable to a
painting, where different layers or variations of one and the same picture become
visible or vanish in certain intervalls, following it's own pattern.
What I like most about DUB is that it can or should be highly dramaturgical because
it follows the principle of MINIMALISM. There are always only a few basic elements in
a track, the bass being the foundation, then drums, chords and maybe a short melody
line. So suddenly leaving one of these elements out, bringing it back again or simply
changing an effects parameter creates TENSION. There is always tension in a track,
nobody can foresee what will happen when (in contrary to all 'classic' popsong
structures) and these are the huge achievements of DUB: tension and unpredictabilty.
When you listen to minimal techno (e.g. Robert Hood tracks) you can recognize this
very principle - the constant building and releasing of tension. The roots are in
DUB.
So what is new with DLR is not the principle of DUB, it is the SOUND that is used for
creating it. After King Tubbys death and the overall commercialisation of Reggae
leading to it's sorry state of today, experiments with Digital Reggae and Digital Dub
were basically reduced of emulating the sound of Dub's prime time with the now
available electronic equipment, holding the flag high with nostalgia and praisings
for the dead. This can only lead to a dead end. The sound of then can of course not
be reproduced because the means were different then - and why do something that has
been done before to perfection?
But then Clicks & Cuts came, opening up new possibilities and developing new listenig
habits. Creating sounds with destrucion and reconstruction, Copy and Paste. Bouncy
delays and Buffer Override. Formant synthesis and Bit-Downsampling. These are todays
means of producing music, acessible to anyone with a computer and easy to learn if
you're willing to experiment.
After listening to lots of Electronica- and Clicks & Cuts- music for years I still
appreciated the ideas for sound very much but I started to get bored with it.
Something important seemed to lack the music, Clicks & Cuts somehow couldn 't give me
something I really needed with records and first I coudn't place a finger on what it
really was. Actually it's very easy: it's a very important element, that is
elementary for all music: the SOUL of it.
C&C is very often and conciously 'un-music' (if you know Autechre you know what I
mean), done with the head only for the head only. It is math translated to music,
formulas, algorhythms and random parameters rendered to sound. The overall feeling is
mostly something like a clinical coldness, distance and emotional void that after
some time didn't get to me sufficently. Looking for something that could fill in
this lack of SOUL in the otherwise highly inspiring sounds I came to Reggae and Dub.
Because I knew and liked the principles of it already from electronic music (DUB
being its predecessor) and I appreciate the ecstatic use of effects this process was
a very fast and profound one. And in this way I got the SOUL and DEEPNESS I was
looking for along with it.
There's one more kind of music that really inspired us hugely: the timeless RHYTHM &
SOUND releases. They showed - especially with their BURIAL MIX series - that Dub and
Reggae can be done with electronic means only and still contain deepness and emotion.
Also with their re-pressings of long lost WACKIEs records they brought reggae itself
to our field of vision, a thing for which I will always be grateful. We took their
approach on DUB as a starting point and ended up in a process that in the last months
finally developed into a concrete shape.
So - to make a long story short - the idea of DLR is to produce 100% digital music,
using the whole range of sounds that Clicks & Cuts made possible and giving the whole
math of this kind of music, that it by definition only can be, one thing it lacks in
most cases: SOUL.
It's still an experiment of some kind but in the cases of the releases we present
here we think that the experiment worked out in a way. We hope you enjoy the music
and other stuff you can find here and let us know how you liked it!
IRIE!
disrupt
 MAIN |
TOP  |
REGGAE HISTORY  |
