Scientist & The Upsetters + Digital Mystiks / Loefah

[ska invita]

Scientist will be live dub mixing reggae band The Upsetters with support from Pinch, Mala, Loefah and Pokes.

The legendary dub originator Scientist lands in the UK to celebrate the release of new Tectonic album Scientist Launches Dubstep Into Outer Space. The seven date tour kicks off at Fabric, London on Thursday 18 November before visiting Dublin, Bournemouth, Glasgow, Nottingham, Brighton and Bristol, Glasgow and Brighton.

On this tour Scientist will be live dub mixing renowned reggae group The Upsetters, who were originally Lee Scratch Perry’s house band before going on to form the nucleus of The Wailers. Completing this very special line up is Tectonic boss Pinch and fellow dubstep luminaries Mala, Loefah, and Pokes.

Tectonic’s most ambitious project to date, Scientist Launches Dubstep Into Outer Space sees legendary dub engineer Scientist version 12 exclusive and unreleased dubstep rhythms from the scene’s top producers including Kode 9, Shackleton, Pinch and Mala. It’s a vital and unprecedented move for dubstep; one year in the making, uniting roots and futurism in visionary style. In archetypal style, Scientist puts decades of tactile, hands-on experience to work, deftly transforming the killer originals into living, breathing dub music with his most sacred of black arts.

Label boss Pinch says “This project has taken over a year to put together from its conception late last summer. The final results are worth every minute of effort that’s gone into this – this is definitely my proudest moment for Tectonic to date. The influence of dub swings round full circle!”

Thursday 18 November
Tectonic & Red Bull Music Academy presents Scientist Launches Dubstep Into Outerspace
Venue: Fabric, 77A Charterhouse St, London, EC1M 6HJ
Info: 020 7336 8898
Live: Scientist Vs The Upsetters
DJs: Pinch, Mala, Loefah, Pokes
Tickets: £12.50 from ticketweb.co.uk
Doors: 9pm

Friday 19 November
MUD: Reach 4th Birthday – Tectonic presents Scientist Launches Dubstep Into Outerspace
Venue: Twisted Pepper, 54 Middle Abbey St, 1, Ireland
Info: +353 1 873 4038
Live: Scientist Vs The Upsetters
DJs: Pinch, Mala, Loefah, Pokes
Tickets: €15.00 from m.bodytonicmusic.com/events
Doors: 10pm

Saturday 20 November
Tectonic presents Scientist Launches Dubstep Into Outerspace
Venue: The Old Firestation, 36 Holdenhurst Road, Bournemouth, Dorset, BH8 8AD
Info: 020 7336 8898
Live: Scientist Vs The Upsetters
DJs: Pinch, Mala, Pokes
Tickets: £7.00 from wegottickets.com
Doors: 10pm

Sunday 21 November
Tectonic & Red Bull Music Academy presents Scientist Launches Dubstep Into Outerspace
Venue: Stereo, 20-28 Renfield Lane, Glasgow, G2 6PH
Info: 0141 222 2254
Live: Scientist Vs The Upsetters
DJs: Pinch, Loefah, Pokes, Electric Eliminators
Tickets: £14.00 from tickets-scotland.com
Doors: 9pm

Tuesday 23 November
Tectonic presents Scientist Launches Dubstep Into Outerspace
Venue: Rescue Rooms, 25 Goldsmith Street, Nottingham, NG1 5LB
Info: 0871 310 0000
Live: Scientist Vs The Upsetters
DJs: Pinch, Mala, Loefah, Pokes
Tickets: £15.00 from SeeTickets.com
Doors: 7pm

Wednesday 24 November
Tectonic & Red Bull Music Academy presents Scientist Launches Dubstep Into Outerspace
Venue: Concorde 2, 18 Margaret St, Brighton, East Sussex, BN2 1TS
Info: 01273 673 311
Live: Scientist Vs The Upsetters
DJs: Pinch, Mala, Pokes
Tickets: £8.00 from SeeTickets.com
Doors: 8pm

Thursday 25 November
Tectonic presents Scientist Launches Dubstep Into Outerspace
Venue: The Old Fire Station, Silver Street, Bristol, BS1 2PY
Info: 01179297534
Live: Scientist Vs The Upsetters
DJs: Pinch, Mala, Loefah, Pokes
Tickets: £TBA
Doors: TBA

This is going to be big - get tickets while you can. The London date is on a Thursday - I guess they'll just be in room 1 at Fabric? If so, thats not the biggest space in the world - bound to sell out.

No news on the Upsetters line up just yet - I'll keep my eyes peeled.

It looks like the live show will be a live dub of the upsetters (playing what I dont know), but there will be a scientist dubs dubstep album?

*By the way, I read the other day science/scientist refers to Obeah, jamaican witchcraft, as opposed to thermonuclear dynamics!

 

[ska invita]

Transpontine brilliant and researced as ever:

For those who never stop complaining that there isn't enough dub in dubstep comes news that Tectonic Recordings are releasing a whole album of remixes by Jamaican dub producer Hopeton Brown, AKA Scientist. 'Scientist Launches Dubstep Into Outer Space' is out next month,and features remixes of tracks by Shackleton, Kode9 and King Midas Sound among others (full track listing at Resident Advisor News).

Scientist first came on to my radar during my Autonomous Astronaut search for interesting space-themed music, in particular his 1981 masterpieces Dub Landing and Scientist Meets the Space Invaders. Brown was only 21 when these came out, having served a teenage apprenticeship at King Tubby's Dromilly Road studio in Kingston. Thirty years later he is still in dispute with record companies about the royalties for these and other early albums (see this interview at United Reggae). With his evident interest in extraterrestial adventures, Scientist can be claimed for the reggae wing of the 'Afrofuturist' current, with their 'projections of Africanized technology, of dreadlocks as antennae, of blackness into space and the future' (Wayne Marshall, Trading in Futures: from Rastas in Space to Dreadlocked Aliens and Back, Woofah #4, 2010).

But Robert Beckford has also linked Scientist to the African-Caribbean past:

'What I find most interesting at this juncture in the development of the genre is that Brown, who made his name at the Randy's studio, used the self-description 'scientist'. Those familiar with Caribbean religious cultures will know that this is a designation for an indigenous healer or Obeah-Myal practitioners... Brown infers that dubbing, in this culture at least, is a holistic enterprise involving mind, body and spirit'.

Beckford sees dub as healing, part of 'the pharmacosm of sound in African cultures', and further that 'dub as an act of deconstruction' involving 'taking out and bringing in' sonic elements draws on 'healing practices in Jamaican folk culture'. He describes 'the Obeah-Myal complex' as an 'African religious survival' practiced by the slaves and their descendants in Jamaica: 'Obeah involved the deployment of malignant spirits on adversaries through a variety of tactics and techniques. To combat Obeah, Myal, the good medicine, was sought. Myal medicine provided protection against the bad spirits and returned the individual and community to equilibrium' (Robert Beckford, Jesus Dub: Theology, Music and Social Change, Routledge, 2006).

A similar point has been made by Lloyd Bradley, who Beckford quotes: 'It's an ancient African medicine that splits the body up into seven centres or 'selves' - sexual, digestive, heart, brain etc. - and by prescribing various herbs and potions would, as practitioners always describe it, 'bring forward or push back' different centres: remixing, as it were, a person's physical or mental state into something very different... In the same way by adjusting the controls at the mixing desk, a tune... can be reinvented' (Lloyd Bradley, Bass Culture: when Reggae was King, Pluto, 2001).

http://history-is-made-at-night.blogspot.com/2010/10/scientist-dub-from-obeah-myal-to-outer.html

 

[ska invita]

Transpontine posted this one

 

[ringo]

I saw Scientist in the 90's mixing live at one of the Brighton Essential Festivals, serious dub. He's been doing a full rendition of his LP "Scientist Rids The World Of The Evil Curse Of The Vampires" with the Roots Radics in the US. Here's a review:

Scientist and the Roots Radics at Dubquake 10/16/10 review

Postby will-I » Sun Oct 17, 2010 12:29 pm
I dont go to reggae shows often but I got to see the Radics and Scientist with special guests General Jah Mikey, Ranking Joe and Sister Nancy last night, I just got home from the show!

UN FREAKING BELIEVABLE!!!!! RUB-A-DUB sound inna 81 stylee LIVES! The Roots Radics cannot be topped LIVE, they are the best to my ears and it seemed like alot of folks felt it too. Those of us fortunate enough to be there got to take a ride in a timemachine.

Flabba Style Dwight T-Bird and the rest of the band killed it!! (sorry didnt catch the percussionist and horn players names)

The Radics/DJ set with Scientist was the High point of the show.

The show had some challenges, but the really good parts were EPIC!!!!!

Uh lets see Ranking Joe performing Weakheart Fadeaway hello!!! Ranking joe stole the show in my opinion in the DJ set. General Jah Mikey was also off the hook, Sister Nancy rounded out the set really nicely. "BAM BAM" more on this in a minute. This is really about the Roots Radics re-union. its what made this an extra special night.

let me talk about....

The opening performance of the 'Vampire' album was pretty interesting. It felt like folks almost didnt know how to react to live Dub this way, it was good I just really missed the vocalists with their vocal snippets "you are a no good you are a no goo o ad, for the things you do in front of meeaaaa...", I thought that that was the plan for the performance but the dubset was without vocals. They had the samples "I want Blood ha ha ha!!" and some others which were a nice surprise. It was overall pretty dam faithfully played and SO much better than I ever imagined.

Flabba Style and Company had EPIC moments in the dub, and had a Sax player that really set off Firehouse Rock. I think Dwights playing on this track was really extra nice, people kept cheering when those guys would play their phrase and Scientist echo chambered it out. I was so happy to see the horn player up there, its rare you get to see them these days. That brass just cuts through you know.

Scientist did a really good job I think there were some really cool parts he did flying his faders and it was cool to see the band interacting with it. The Radics were getting more experimentational (sp? is that a word) toward the last half of 'Vampire' as they tried to stretch out the dub and push it a little further, Flabba and Style did not miss a beat...I dont think thats in their DNA. Did I mention the percussionist? his little scratches and cow bells added that little extra special touch.

some of the tracks on 'vampire' worked much better than others live and there were also some pretty serious sound issues, but not enough to kill the momentum and heat coming offa that drum and bass combo of Flabba & Style. They never broke form.

Let me say this slow so you all can hear me.......no one, I mean no one can touch these two when they are locked in the groove, groove isnt even a strong enough word. Sorry thats just what I think after seeing it. It was as good as on the records from the early 80s, they transported me back to the heyday of Channel One studios.

I used to play some of these rhythms with a reggae band 10 years ago. It was such a treat to see them play those same rhythms in the way only they can. Live no less and in the year 2010!! something like this for over 16 years!

After hearing them play all the tracks in sequence, I was really ready for the DJ set, there was a Japanese DJ before Jah Mikey came on but I didnt catch her name and missed most of her performance and got back just before General Jah Mikey, never heard of him but great energy on stage and his Dennis Brown, Milk and Honey song check in his rhyme really got me. Great Singjay style.

I think I died when Ranking Joe was introduced, I forget what song they went into but I will never forget how I felt when he launched into his thing. I was absolutely blissed out the whole time he was up there. Love Ranking Joe what a class act he is.

Sister Nancy came out and did her songs and seemed to really enjoy herself. She had really good energy. It was very cool to have her to balance out the Men performers. Her voice was a little rough but It didnt matter.

I will be getting the setlist later and will post it up. thanks for reading this far....

I feel so blessed I got to see it in my lifetime. It has been my dream to see the Roots Radics do something even remotely this cool. I will never forget it. It was an historic event.

 

[ska invita]

^^^^...droooling...

Im really curious to hear how a live band can be dubbed. its one thing dubbing from master tapes (like mad professor does)- thats pretty much the same as the studio process, but with a live band you can't, for example, cut out the drums - or you could but the drummer would keep playing, and I'd imagine the crowd would hear it. Cant wait to see/hear it go down...

 

[ddraig]

WOW!

that all makes me tingle and hair stand on end!
got to get to that Brizzle show

 

[stavros]

On a related topic, does anyone know if Scientist's albums are out of print or deleted? I'm thinking "Heavyweight Dub Champion", "World Cup", "Pacman", "Space Invaders", etc. I can never find, either in shops or online.

 

[rutabowa]

some available here: http://store.vprecords.com/prodlist...ist&strSearchType=AND&action=search&artistid=
(digitial only tho it looks like... this is the label that owns the albums tho so it would be them who reissue on cd/vinyl)

 

[ska invita]

http://www.discogs.com/artist/Scientist <best bet for 2nd hand

 

[ska invita]

had a great time at this last night - if you're in Dublin. Bournemouth, Glasgow, Nottingham, Brighton, or Bristol, where the show goes next, I heartily recommend getting down to catch it - not an everyday occurrence.

I've done a write up of the night, but its a bit long for a cut and paste, so here's the link if anyone's interested:
http://mikusmusik.blogspot.com/p/live-session-write-ups.html

...album officially out on the 29th Nov - promos out already so probably on the net somewhere - be really interesting to hear that. Its going to eb a double CD format (dont know about vinyl)

Scientist Mixes
Pinch ft. Emika - 2012 Dub
Armour (Roly Vex'd) - The Long Way Dub
Guido - Korg Back Dub
Shackleton - Hackney Marshes Dub
King Midas Sound - U Dub
Loefah & SGT Pokes - Dog Money Dub
Distance - Ill Kontent Dub
RSD - After All Dub
Jack Sparrow - Red Sand Dub
Mala (Digital Mystikz) - City Cycle Dub
Cyrus (Random Trio) - Footsteps Dub
Kode 9 & Spaceape - Abeng Dub

Dubstep Originals
Pinch ft. Emika - 2012
Armour (Roly Vex'd) - The Long Way
Guido - Korg Back
Shackleton - Hackney Marshes
King Midas Sound - U
Loefah & SGT Pokes - Dog Money
Distance - Ill Kontent
RSD - After All
Jack Sparrow - Red Sand
Mala (Digital Mystikz) - City Cycle
Cyrus (Random Trio) - Footsteps
Kode 9 & Spaceape - Abeng

 

[past caring]

On a related topic, does anyone know if Scientist's albums are out of print or deleted? I'm thinking "Heavyweight Dub Champion", "World Cup", "Pacman", "Space Invaders", etc. I can never find, either in shops or online.

I could do a burn for any/all of them* (plus a few more) if anyone wanted....

* - I think, not at home at the mo' to check - but I'm fairly certain I have 'em all.

 

[ddraig]

wicked ska
already had tickets delivered for Bristol
next week! can't wait

 

[ska invita]

supposedly he didnt reach dublin tonight becuase of visa problems

 

[Herbsman.]

http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/threads/200419-If-Scientist-released-a-new-album..

 

[ska invita]

just heard from a friend that rodigan gave over the whole of this weekends show to an interview with SCientist. havent listend to it yet, and the website has no details, but it should be here: http://djs.totalkiss.com/dj/davidrodigan/
currently top show, date 21.11.10, will be on listen again for a week.
might be on rodigan.com too but site is down at the mo

 

[ska invita]

Yes, Rodigan did interview Scientist, and a great show it was too. Ive ripped a copy of it and am hosting on my site if anyone wants to give it a listen.

it was streamed at a pretty low bit rate on the 'listen again' player - ive recorded it at 320 and processed it just a little to get it sounding a bit better. if you dont want to download the file (130MB) you can listen in a little player on my you can listen to it in a little player site here

 

[SunRarr]

Anyone heard the Tectonic CD yet? The disc of originals is great (that Mala track is a killer) but was very disappointed with the Scientist disc. He hasn't done anything the original artists couldn't have done in the first place and do any of these tracks actually need dubs in the first place?

 

[ddraig]

sorry
went to the Bristol one and after taking ages to find the place, had a good night
liked the venue, staff and ravers, was like a glorified legal squat party set up complete with crustyish barstaff but with more beers on offer. there was a good outside bit in the middle with a big fire thing too. great use for an old fire station

only got there about 11 and only about 10-15 mins before the band and Scientist so missed some tuneage. what we did hear was heavy but was expecting heavier tbh, might have been the rig, the room, or that it was so busy and wasn't up for pushing through to the front.
was good to hear vampire dub and others but again wasn't loud enough for me and looked like they were warming up.
it did get better and everyone got into it
pinch was good after as well, saw him a few years ago in a smaller place in Cardiff and he rocked it

had flyer packs on way out which i knew would do my head in for missing stuff but i still looked at them, fairplay Brizzle, am jealous.
crossing the Severn bridge home at 3ish was a bit strange but worth it (i wasn't driving heh)

so nice one Scientist and Tectonic crew, good luck with the record

 

[ska invita]

Anyone heard the Tectonic CD yet? The disc of originals is great (that Mala track is a killer) but was very disappointed with the Scientist disc. He hasn't done anything the original artists couldn't have done in the first place and do any of these tracks actually need dubs in the first place?

I havent heard it yet, but Im sure i'll agree with you - the odds were this was going to look better on paper, but you never know, it could have been quite different. dubstep tracks are built strictly on computers and i would guess 99% of tracks dont involve any on the fly action on a mixing desk - writing in effects on a sequencer creates a very different sound to physical playing with the faders and eqs live. im still interested to give a listen though...

there was a good outside bit in the middle with a big fire thing too. great use for an old fire station

glad you had a good one - sounds like an interesting set up - shame about the rig

 

[cantsin]

Anyone heard the Tectonic CD yet? The disc of originals is great (that Mala track is a killer) but was very disappointed with the Scientist disc. He hasn't done anything the original artists couldn't have done in the first place and do any of these tracks actually need dubs in the first place?

why don't you piss off you scummy little Cop loving wind up merchant, your lame assed views on dubstep mean fuck all to anyone with half a brain here.