Anyone who talks about dub must also talk about studio music. At least in the sense that studios have acquired increased importance in the history of dub music. The genre's birth is closely linked to the studio and its possibilities to vary, change, and improve during, and above all also AFTER the recordings. Lee "Scratch" Perry and King Tubby – it was called versioning – let loose and invented not only dub as its own genre within reggae, but also the modern studio musician. If one now jumps both chronologically - from the seventies to the present -, and geographically - from Kingston via London to Cologne - one lands in the Dumbo Studio. Where glorious albums have been crafted and developed in recent years, now a most daring attempt at international universality is being born.

Philipp Janzen aka Dumbo Tracks is exactly right in that he has been an integral part of the local music scene for 20 years. Whether as part of Urlaub in Polen, Von Spar, Cologne Tape, most recently also Die Sterne or as a drummer for The Field, Owen Pallett and Scout Niblett – critics and fans have long been sure. Thus, one of the most daring attempts to counter the often claimed internationality of the city of Cologne and the entire German music scene is being born, a real, a truly existing one.

So international is not only the lineup here, which playfully jets from California to Japan, from Stuttgart to Canada, from Weilheim to Sweden, but also the actual approach: Dumbo Tracks is not a musician's project, but the idea, vision, and magic trick of a producer.

Here, the different facets of dub and its possibilities are tested. Sometimes it sounds like it comes straight from the Black Ark Studios; but much more often transatlantically mediated through The Specials and DJs like Don Letts, Andrew Weatherall, or Adrian Sherwood. So Dumbo Tracks also takes on the myths that are otherwise carried forward all too often.

Where spirituality, Jah, the Jewish lion, and Babylon are given no importance, there is more room for the truly important aspects of music and production here: Repetition, endless reverb, deep bass. Dumbo Tracks masters drums, synths, effects, and singers alike as instruments, making version after version, until in the end the dub of the dub of the original appears. The studio becomes here, as with all great albums, the de facto extension of the producer's body. J.G. Ballard's "Crash" pays its respects. This consistent condensation is heard the further you immerse yourself in this sound universe, with every track Dumbo Tracks becomes more compact – until you are threatened with being crushed by the bass, the glaring snare hits. The producer's record is meanwhile not merely an end in itself, but a necessary condition: There is no proper dubbing in the wrong pop understanding.

Credits
Text: Lars Fleischmann
Image: Frederike Wetzels