Editor’s Note: At midnight last night, Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad released a mini-EP on Easy Star Records titled Chants Dubbed and Remixed, which includes two mind-blowing dub remixes of their song, “Chants” featuring Clinton Fearon from their last studio LP, Love in Time. Bass player and singer, James Searl, authors this Single Showcase and shares a special video of studio engineer Joel Scanlon aka J DUBBY working his magic.
The wise man, Pablo Moses, once said “Dubbing is a must. It’s a must!”
Dub as a branch of reggae has always fascinated us since our beginning as a band. The ability to recreate, extend, enhance, and rearrange something as fixed as a recorded song is one of the most profound discoveries of time manipulation demonstrated by humans as of yet. Jamaican recording engineers such as Scientist, Lee Perry, and King Tubby, of course, pioneered the art that became known to the rest of the world as the remix.
Every time we record a song, we are already more excited for the dub possibilities. While mixing our song “Chants,” we asked Jah D of Zion I Kings to please send his dub interpretation of the song along with the album mix. It is titled “I Believe In Dub” and it is a more traditional style of a one pass dub version that often followed original versions on B sides of 7” traditional reggae releases.
We also sent the raw stems to our longtime collaborator and engineer, Joel Scanlon AKA J DUBBY in Colorado. Joel took a totally different approach of recomposing the song – bringing new meaning to lyrics in vocal mashups, adding additional bass, percussion, real spring reverb, a Mu-Tron Bi-Phase (a Panda favorite from our first record, Slow Down) as well as live analog effects on the Fulltone Tube Tape Echoplex and the Benidub DS01E.
He also took a version into a one of a kind secret recording studio where they are learning to mix with a new kind of technology called Ambisonics – or spatial sound. This will be the technology used in virtual reality, Apple Vision Pro, and the future of sound to come; 44 speakers with four subs surrounding the listener. “There hasn’t been much music mixed for this kind of technology yet, and dub is absolutely the perfect genre for it!” J DUBBY explained excitedly. While he could only take a small video of the experience, he shared a short top-secret video with us.
It’s always cool to work with engineers who have studied the analog strengths of the past while being a part of the sonic future to come, all the while keeping the foundations of reggae music and dub in mind.
This comes as part of our release of Love In Time Xtras – expect more from the vault to come and stay LIT!
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