Dub Revolutionaries: Sly & Robbie Meet the Mad Professor

Performer: Sly & Robbie
Engineer: Baby Dread; Joe Ariwa; Mad Professor
Producer: Mad Professor
Distributor: BMG (distributor)

Notes: Personnel includes: Sly Dunbar (drums); Robbie Shakespeare (bass); Dean Fraser (saxophone); Sky Juice (percussion). Personnel: Leroy Mafia (keyboards); Sly Dunbar (drums); Sky Juice (percussion). Recording information: Ariwa Sounds Studio (04/2003). If any players could take credit for the paring-down of reggae that resulted in dub, it would be the erstwhile Peter Tosh rhythm section of Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare. Dunbar, especially, is a drumming karateka--lean, muscular, ultimately flexible, highly technical, restrained and powerful. In the studio, Sly meets his creative and technical match on DUB REVOLUTIONARIES in the dub of Neil "The Mad Professor" Fraser, who couples a genius for electronics with an innate sense of rhythm and dub. Adding Jamaican sax legend Dean Fraser (presumably no relation), the Kenny G of Jamaica, and you have the makings of one of the most unique almost-smooth jazz records out there. The tracks are so inspiring, they may represent Dean's most creative blowing, as on "Freedom Illusion," which might be the most powerful thing ever to come out of his usually sedate horn. DUB REVOLUTIONARIES refines the kind of rocksteady dub that has fallen out of favor with the dancehall crowd, but unlike so much modern dub, this is foreground music, hypnotic and aggressive as only the riddim section of Sly and Robbie could make it.

Drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie Shakespeare are not only the most renowned rhythm section in reggae, they're among the most celebrated groovemeisters in all of pop music. The Kingston pair starting playing together in the mid-1970s, when reggae was really hitting its stride, and they quickly became in-demand session players. In Jamaica they graced the recordings of countless artists, from Lee "Scratch" Perry to Peter Tosh. After Sly & Robbie's fame spread to the US and UK in the '80s, they were recruited by Bob Dylan, Grace Jones and other pop/rock stars. The duo's own project Taxi, featuring various guest vocalists, was a reggae crossover success that displayed Dunbar and Shakespeare's growing technological facility as well as their vaunted rhythmic prowess.

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