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Burning Babylon Burning Babylon is a dub reggae experience firmly anchored in the 1970s, Jamaican roots tradition, but with an ear to the "neo" dub sounds of the past few years. Greetings! My name is Slade Anderson, the sole member of Burning Babylon. I came to dub relatively late in my musical career. For 15 years I played guitar in various punk/metal bands in the Boston area, some of which you may be familiar with (The Freeze, The Straw Dogs). To me, heavyweight music meant snarling guitars and screaming stacks of Marshall amps. It took me many years to realize that music with both of those elements removed could still be heavy and powerful. Not surprisingly, the music I played mirrored what I listened to - loud and fast were the rules of my turntable. What little reggae I did hear came to me via The Clash and, of course, Bob Marley. The word "dub" had yet to enter my vocabulary. Although when I was still a teenager it had begun slowly creeping in around the edges, reggae stayed on the periphery of my listening experience for many years to follow. During the mid 90s I began playing bass seriously for the first time. Also during this same period I decided to investigate other genres of music. After having come full circle from punk rock to heavy metal and back, reggae seemed like a reasonable next step on the "rebellion" train. Since I was now primarily a bass player, focusing on music that was bass-oriented also made sense. Enter reggae. I knew I wanted music that was more earthy and less slick than Marley or Tosh, but I had no idea what to buy. So I searched for albums that looked as though they migh offer what I wanted. The first one I bought was Glen Brown and King Tubby: Termination Dub. The cover looked as if the music was going to be pretty classic, grungy and authentic and I thought the title was cool as well. Luckily I'd hit on exactly what I was in search of. It didn't take long to readjust the way I listened to music (with little or no vocals) to fully appreciate what I was hearing. Drums drenched in reverb, horns and guitars echoing into oblivion, and the most heavyweight bass I'd ever heard. I was hooked! It wasn't long before dub was stuck in my brain. Soon I was buying every album I could find to immerse myself in the music. Being a bass player, I decided to teach myself how to play reggae. After a few weeks of wrestling with the rhythms, I finally got it and recorded my first dub track. Burning Babylon was born. My recording gear has been a fairly lo-fi affair
since the beginning, mainly due to the expense of the equipment, my
loathing for complicated technology, and impatience with marathon recording
sessions. Initially I was recording on a Tascam Porta-4 4-track that
I had bought in the late 80s. I quickly discovered that 4 tracks were
not going to be enough, so I invested in a Tascam 488 Mark II 8-track
which I've used until recently, when I decided to go digital and upgraded
to a Boss BR-1180 hard disk recorder. Now I use both machines in conjunction
with one another. My recording process is pretty simple. Essentially, the tunes are written as I go. It all springs from a bass line and a very loosely formed idea of what I want from a song. That loosely formed idea usually mutates as the song is built - sort of taking on a life of its own and showing me where it wants to go. With the bass line in mind, I find or create a drum pattern via a drum machine (Boss DR5) or sampled loops (Boss SP202 sampler). Once I've got those reasonably set, I record those tracks and the rest of the song is built around them. Next to go down is usually guitar, piano or organ melodies/riffs. Then comes whatever fiddly-bits I feel it needs (snatches of vocals, odd sounds echoing into the distance, horns and various international ethnic musical tidbits). I got interested in the ethnic stuff mostly because I just thought it added an element of mystery to the tracks, and since dub is basically just drum and bass, that leaves a lot of room to play around on top so why limit yourself to just guitars and keyboards? Once I've recorded all the tracks, that's when the disassembling takes place. Now that I've built the song, I go in and take it all apart. Much of the time, it's listening to the song 80 trillion times (ah yes, I get stuck with the marathon session anyway…) and playing with it - dropping tracks in and out and experimenting with different effects - till everything all flows together. Then, once I'm satisfied with the reassembled song, I do a final mix-down straight to CD. Basically I think of myself as more of a musical "collagist" than anything - instead of making a collage of pictures and images I use sounds. However, Living Soul Dub was recorded, mixed and dubbed very quickly and spontaneously - I wanted to keep the whole process as close as possible to the way dub was originally created. Living Soul Dub was intended to have a sparse and elementary sound as opposed to many other Burning Babylon tracks which are more musically "dense." While I imagine and hope that I have my own unique take on dub, I've certainly been influenced by the lesser known Dry and Heavy from Japan and Nashville's Phase Selector Sound as well as Twilight Circus. And the spirit of the usual suspects (King Tubby, Mad Professor, Lee "Scratch") looms large in my studio. THE STUDIO: "Living Soul Dub" was recorded and mixed using the following gear: Tascam 488 Mark II 8-Track recorder Big thanks to Tanty for the opportunity! Check out the Burning
Babylon page on mp3.com. Thanks for listening - Peace. Slade |
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