Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires
A 1981 dub album with a comic book sleeve and a silly title that happens to be one of the sharpest, funniest and best sequenced records the form has produced.
There is a certain kind of listener who cannot get past the sleeve. A cartoon Scientist at a mixing desk, fending off vampires with the faders, drawn by Tony McDermott in a style borrowed from horror comics. It looks like a novelty. Greensleeves put out a whole run of these and the packaging did more than anything else to get dub in front of British teenagers who would never have picked up an import.
The joke is that the record inside is completely serious about what it does.
The playing
The rhythms come from the Roots Radics, who by 1981 were the working band for a large part of Jamaican music, and their particular quality is restraint. Everything sits slightly behind the beat. The bass lines are simple, repeated, and enormous. Nothing is hurried and nothing is showing off, which leaves an unusual amount of space for the engineer to work in.
That space is the point. Give a mixer a busy track and dub becomes a fight. Give them this and every decision is audible.
The mixing
Scientist’s approach is quicker and wittier than the generation before him. Where a Tubby mix can feel monumental, this is closer to timing in comedy. Effects arrive a beat after you expect them. A snare goes off into a delay that lasts just long enough to be funny before the bass returns and shuts it down. Parts drop out mid phrase.
What keeps it from being merely clever is the pacing across the whole album. It is sequenced like a set, with the sparse tracks placed where you need relief and the heaviest arriving after you have been softened up. Very few dub albums are worth playing end to end. This one is.
Where it sits
It is not the most profound dub record ever made, and it does not try to be. It is the most persuasive one to hand to somebody who thinks dub is difficult, because the pleasure in it is immediate and the craft only becomes obvious on the fifth listen.
Play it loud. Play it on something with real low end if you possibly can. And do not let the vampires put you off.
Verdict: essential, and the best possible starting point.