Dub Stax

At least since the Easy Star Allstars and Mato we know that everything is different dubben lets: The Beatles, David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Daft Punk, Country & Western, soundtracks, even classical music. And now also soul. The album "Dub Stax” (Echo Beach) by drummer Achim Färber proves it. As is well known, soul and reggae have a common past. Especially during the rocksteady era, almost every US soul release was covered in Jamaica. So it makes sense to approach soul today using reggae means. Even more specific: With Dub-means. The big advantage: Dub reduces the fall height, because compared to a “normal” cover version, it has to Dubversion does not stand up to comparison with the original, but is viewed more as an independent work - which also opens up greater creative scope. “Why not?” thought Achim Färber, currently the drummer for the band Automat, got a few musicians together (!) and started playing and recording classics from the legendary soul label Stax dubben. Interestingly, Färber has hardly had anything to do with reggae so far. His impressive discography lists hundreds of names, including only one, Deadbeat, which I know from the reggae context. This may be why the sound of his recordings is atypical for reggae. But ultimately it doesn't matter, because what matters is the quality of the music - and not what it is comparable to. So let's listen carefully. What strikes you first: the supposed ones Dubs have a fairly large vocal component. Although these are often fragmented and the majority of them are lost in the echo, this still represents the categorization as “Dub“a little questionable. However, there are enough instrumental versions and even explicit ones on the album.Dub Cuts” to the title “Dub Stax” can ultimately be justified. Nevertheless, it would have been more consistent to do without vocals completely. But that may be a subjective judgment of taste on my part, because I like the excessive use of vocal fragments in the Dub not. Because singing inevitably banishes the instrumental music into the background. It becomes “backing” and loses its inherent value and only “serves” the singing. At the Dub But it's exactly about bringing the “backing” to the forefront, putting all the focus on it and letting it work in all its beauty. That's why singing bothers me Dub-Mixes in principle - whereas I love it when one Dub begins with singing, which then, in an act of unscrupulous anarchy and disrespect, is simply cut off in the middle of the word by the engineer and then dissolves into reverb and smoke. Okay, so on this aspect I'm convinced Dub Not Stax. Otherwise there is little to complain about. The interpretations of the Stax classics are truly original. The sound sometimes reminds me of the Senior Allstars, a bit dry, a bit woody, but with a solid groove. The DubHowever, the mix is ​​extremely subtle, a bit too repetitive and generally not really exciting.