Before I fanboyed out of Lee Perry and King Tubby and Scientist, this was what I thought of when I thought of dub. Less associated in my brain with reggae at that time than as a confluence of many branches of electronic music, I was more familiar with Bill Laswell and Spring Heel Jack at that time. And "Macro Dub Infection Volume One", which I first encounted in the back pages of my buddy's CaseLogic binder, is the key reason why.
I love how broadly defined dub is here. This is a distinctly British endeavor, featuring names like Mad Professor, Laika, 4hero, and the Disciples. The Yanks make a couple of appearances: it's the first time I ever heard Tortoise, and Laswell performs under his illbient Automaton banner. This was also probably the first time I had come across Tricky. "Maxinquaye", "Nearly God", and "Pre-Millenial Tension" were such huge records for me in the late 90s, and this was my first exposure to his genius. There are even surface outliers like COIL and Scorn present, though a dive into their tracks provides the context that, yeah, they belong here.
Released on Virgin in the UK and Caroline in the States, it was nice turning up a copy for $3 at Value Village over the summer and nudging me to really dig back into my mid-90s electronic collection. And apologies for any stray tagging here; I would have gone back and corrected with a fresh upload, but I also downgraded my copy on my hard drive to a 128kbps version and stored the CDs. And most folks I know would trade incomplete tagging for a high sample rate.
