[CD] SLY & ROBBIE • DUBS FOR TUBS: A TRIBUTE TO KING TUBBY • U.K. IMPORT

Radiation Roots present a reissue of Sly & Robbie's Dubs For Tubs: A Tribute To King Tubby, originally released in 1990. Lowell Dunbar and Robert Shakespeare are the renowned Jamaican rhythm section that has worked with a range of international stars, including Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Joan Armatrading, Garland Jeffries, and countless others. They first came to know each other in the early 1970's, when both were based in rival bands playing in clubs on Kingston's Red Hills Road and started working together at Channel One Studio in the mid-1970's, when Sly was musical arranger for the Revolutionaries house band and Robbie the main bassist for Bunny Lee's Aggrovators. After a stint of international touring in Peter Tosh's Word, Sound and Power band, which exposed them to the tastes and markets of overseas audiences, the pair joined forces more concertedly with their Taxi Records label, producing hits with Gregory Isaacs, Dennis Brown, Sugar Minott, and the Wailing Souls. At the same time, as the driving force behind the Compass Point All Stars, they brought Grace Jones to prominence worldwide and made Gwen Guthrie a star through reggaefied disco, and then brought Black Uhuru into the top spot in the wake of Bob Marley's passing.

Then, when Jamaican music went digital with the Sleng Teng craze of the mid-1980's, Sly and Robbie made the shift in that direction too, becoming among the most prominent producers as the '80s gave way to the '90s. Dubs For Tubs: A Tribute To King Tubby is a digital dub salute to King Tubby, issued shortly after his terrible murder; it is mostly comprised of synthesizer re-cuts of classic Jamaican rhythms, with Dub For Joy being a tough re-working of the Heptones' Love Me Girl and Dub To Make You Move And Groove a take on their Party Time; Dennis Brown's Here I Come is here mutated to Dub For Roots People and his Here I Come anthem shifted into the spongy Dub For All Seasons. An intriguing rework of Sleng Teng is among the other highlights.