Scientist - Tribute to King Tubby Dub (CA)

All Music Guide

Dub whiz kid Scientist (Hopetown Brown) was a shoe-in for doing a King Tubby tribute disc. The prodigy engineer cut his teeth as Tubby's protégé in the '70s, going on to build up his own impressive catalog of solo dub discs during the early '80s. His primitively synthetic, effects-riddled style gets massively updated here on this 1990 Tubby memorial (the dub originator was killed by a robber a year earlier), taking on the digital garb of the ragga hits of the day with drum machine beats, computer soundscapes, and some vocal snippets here and there for good measure. Where his earlier space-age sonics were nicely balanced out by acoustic rhythm tracks, here Scientist gets lost in the mire of the wholly modern production. Inventive moments crop up on "King Pharoah" and the rub-a-dub Caribbean workout "Chant Down Babylon," but unfortunately the album is so immersed in a robotic sheen that dub experimentation is rare. Maybe the digital reggae world of Buju Banton is not the optimal environm...ent for dub; the modern sound born out of producer Prince Jammy's ragga innovation "Under Me Sleng Teng" seems much better suited to dancehall hits then the more introverted and creative style King Tubby helped create. - Stephen Cook, All Music Guide Read more Less