Title: Riders (2024)

Duration: 6’30

Format: Stereo Fixed Media

In 2023, Thought Universe studio was commissioned to create a traditional dub version of the song Riders on the Storm by The Doors. The vocal was sung by the Jamaican singer songwriter Horace Andy. Horace Andy is an artist with a distinctive singing style, mixing melodic phrases with extended techniques. Whilst singing he often imitates the sound of electronic instruments used to produce dub reggae music. He currently sings for the UK band Massive Attack.

In Riders (2024) the dub aesthetic is further expanded by abstracting the vocal recording to create an electroacoustic version. A number of sonic transformation processes were used on the original sound recording. Firstly, I retrograded the sound material using analogue technologies. Such as, tape echo’s, phasers, analogue mixers and low-cost reverb units, enhancing the musical nuisances contained in the vocal recording. Finally, the sounds were edited into fragments and compiled in a way to alter the original meaning of the lyrical content. The process of emergence, a reducibility of objects to the sum total of their material components. The physical reduction of the sound and a re-ordering of grains altered the semiotic meaning. The process spatially abstracts the semiotic chain, through the dynamism of sound, an ever changing propagation with infinite physical and sensorial possibilities.

In many respects, the sonic processes in dub music are similar to electroacoustic music, as they both rely on the creation of a circuit to form a large part of the compositional process.

In the 1970’s custom built studios appeared in Jamaica. Music producers circuit bent hi and lo-fi electronics technologies, defining the dub aesthetic. The lack of resources, due to poor economic growth, gave rise to DIY sound system culture. Providing an exciting platform for inventive and explorative studio creativity. Many of the studio techniques were discovered through a series of ‘happy accidents’, and have had a large impact on music production and electronic instrument design. The appeal of dub music is its playfulness and discovery of working with organized sound in the studio, and is now a global phenomena.

Thought Universe EMS studio is an independent artistic research studio for electronic music in Manchester.

Copyright © Dr. Mark Pilkington 2024.

 

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