Neophyte Steppers - Musical Scratchpad

The dub will return...

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Whilst we're gearing up to start recording '...rids the world of swine flu' this summer, I thought I'd drag out some old Steppers dubs from the archive. I've been really fortunate to work with some great reggae musicians over time, many unknown, many Coventry based: UK Warriors, Starapple, Music Body (later Kifaru), Almighty Dread, 'H' Bembridge, Babs Hay as well as many artists experimenting with the form like Panjabi MC and Sandhya Sanjana.

MP£.com Steppers logoSome of this material had a public outing on MP3.com as was, before the RIAA 'we sue dead people' takedown order. Apparently, some of it was big on Radio Malta's 'Reggae Club'...

The Steppers name was my attempt to live down or eliminate the 'Jah Petey' moniker thrust on me by Cedric and Budgie from Starapple when they heard me stripping back their tunes to the bass and drum and rolling out the tape echo. Getting dubs a bit close to Scientist or Tubby was easier in the days when you could get hold of a WEM Copycat tape echo or Roland 501 Space Echo unit. You could also get that exploding spring sound by passing a send through a fender amp with the reverb up high.

So nowadays I feel like I'm on a quest to find the best digital approximation of low grade analogue equipment - IK Multimedia do a pretty good spring sound, funnily enough in their Fender Amp Simulator whilst there are no end of tape echo VST plugins - the best of which provide tape hiss, motor wobble and high pass filters so that your ears melt the way they should when you push the echo into feedback. Maybe I should just go back to tape like Dry and Heavy did in Japan.

Anyway enjoy the tunes - you can use the box.net widget to play )left click) or download (right click) - some of these tunes might mutate and find their way onto '...rids the world'. We'll see.

Reggae Club Playlist 505

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