Last year we already served you the first two parts in Greensleeves' Evolution Of Dub series. Meanwhile the fifth box is in stores and therefore it's high time for an update.
Part three, 'The Descent Of Version', mainly focuses on Linval Thompson's dub releases. At the end of the 1970s the singer produced three dub albums: 'Negrea Love Dub' (a dub version of his 'I Love Marijuana' album), 'Green Bay Dub' and 'Outlaw Dub', all in cooperation with The Revolutionaries, a band led during that period by riddim tandem Sly Dunbar & Robbie Shakespear. It were those same Revolutionaries who were responsible for 'GoldMine Dub', one of the first releases on the Greensleeves label and still a milestone in dub history.
'Natural Selection', part four in the series, brings together some of Joe Gibbs' and Errol Thompson’s (known as The Mighty Two) dub releases. Mentioning Joe Gibbs and dub in the same sentence automatically leads to the legendary African Dub series. Since 17 North Parade/VP Records recently rereleased parts 1 to 4, only the fifth part ended up in this box, but 'Majestic Dub' and 'State Of Emergency' are equally strong releases. Sly & Robbie's 'Syncopation' nicely illustrates the period when the riddim tandem started experimenting with their so-called "syncopated sound" (in music, syncopation involves a variety of rhythms which are in some way unexpected which make an off-beat tune or piece of music. More simply, syncopation is a general term for "a disturbance or interruption of the regular flow of rhythm": a "placement of rhythmic stresses or accents where they wouldn't normally occur") and contains dub versions of well-known songs like J.C. Lodge's 'I Love You More Than I Can Say' ('Flirting In Space'), Dennis Brown's 'Should I' ('Syncopation') or even The Beatles' 'Ticket To Ride' ('Free Ticket To Ride').
For part five, 'The Missing Link' was chosen as subtitle and for first time in this series the box contains two dub albums "Made in Britain": 'King Of The Dub Rock' and 'King Of The Dub Rock Part 2' were produced by Lloyd 'Coxsone' Blackford, founder of the legendary Sir Coxsone Sound (these days Coxsone Outernational). The two other albums in the box are 'Crueshal Dub' and 'Earthquake Dub', two Revolutionaries releases from 1976 and 1978 produced by Ossie Hibbert (himself active as keyboard player in the same band and also with The Professionals and The Aggrovators) and absolute gems in the genre.