King Size Dub - Hamburg

Sometimes, when the fog hangs over the harbor and a muffled bass wafts through the Speicherstadt from the inside of a club, you think you can hear it – the echo of that fictitious dream beach that Martha & The Muffins sang about in their 1980 song "Echo Beach." What was once just a metaphor has long since become a reality: Echo Beach is in Hamburg. Here, on the banks of the Elbe, Nicolai Beverungen founded a label in 1995 that has since then shaped the Dub-Sound in this country. To mark its 30th anniversary, the label is now returning with the compilation "King size Dub – Hamburg" (Echo Beach) back to its origins – and impressively shows that Dub in this city is more than a style: it is a soundtrack, an attitude, a history.
When Echo Beach launched the first King Size Dubcompilation, it was a statement. While the UKDub in small sound system communities, Nicolai translated the sound for a continental audience and incorporated his own punk past. Compilations from New Zealand, South Africa, Italy, Jamaica and the USA quickly followed, as did reissues and reinterpretations, which Dub associated with dance, punk, minimal and pop. The label catalogue became an open archive of the global Dub-events – without losing sight of the local scene.
Because Hamburg was part of this movement from the very beginning: With formations like Dub Me Ruff, Dub Division, Di Irie and Arfmann's projects (Turtle Bay Country Club, Kastrierte Philosophen) there was already a vital scene in the 90s that was not Jamaican or British Dub copied, but thought further. This is exactly where “King Size Dub – Hamburg” – and brings all these threads together in a dense, 33-track compendium.
This compilation isn't just a simple retrospective. It doesn't just document; it curates, updates, and connects.
The opener – a hypnotic discoDub by Station 17, mixed by DJ Koze – shows how the classic Dub-approach (reduction, space, rhythm) meets current production methods. The fact that Udo Lindenberg and Jan Delay meet on the Reeperbahn (but only on the vinyl LP) is more than a marketing gimmick: It is a reminiscence of the city's pop cultural identity – dissolved into echo and reverb by Guido Craviero, the live sound magician of Seeed and Peter Fox. Matthias Arfmann, one of the founding fathers of German Dub, performs with his son Chassy. It's a nice analogy: Just as the Echo Beach label connects musical generations, so do its protagonists. Lee "Scratch" Perry is represented, as is Elbtonal Percussion, whose Max Romeo cover, in collaboration with Prottassov, looks beyond the box in an avant-garde way. Even politics has a place: TC Sunshine's agit-Dub about Nikel Pallat's legendary appearance on a TV talk show in 1971 (during which a table was broken) sounds like a piece of acoustic memory culture. In "Die Mieten sind zu hoch" (The rents are too high), Knarf Rellöm Arkestra denounces the social reality of many big cities – and is Dub Spencer & Trance Hill from Switzerland congenial in Dub Here, music and milieu combine to create an urban soundscape that extends far beyond Hamburg.
Hamburg's scene thrives not only on its sound systems, but also on the permeability of genres. This is particularly evident on this compilation: Heinz Strunk brings you "Black Jets" Dub“ Puberty in a Nutshell, Jacques Palminger & Kings of DubChaka Khan rocks gender with Hanseatic nonchalance. Prince Istari and Legoluft deliver Dub in the tradition of the DIY spirit, and with Kein Hass Da (the Bad Brains cover in German) a circle closes between punk, Dub and Subversion. Major artists like Deichkind, Erobique, Sam Ragga Band, Fettes Brot, and Goldenen Zitronen are also represented – not as stars, but as part of a collective that defines the diversity of this scene. It's the sound of a city that has never been defined – especially not musically.
What is “King Size Dub – Hamburg” so beautiful is the symbiosis of retrospective and vision. It shows what Echo Beach has stood for since 1995: the constant re-contextualization of a genre that finds its strength in its willingness to experiment. The label has Dub not only imported, but also shaped, adapted, and formed – right up to the celebrated tributes to The Clash, David Bowie, Kraftwerk, Grace Jones, and the Ramones. The city where it all began gets its DubHomage – raw, playful, deep, permeated with traces, voices, and stories. Hamburg is not just a backdrop, but a source of sound. And Echo Beach remains the beacon on the horizon.