ABSTRACT

In this chapter I use several different approaches including interviews, analysis of video footage, and transcription of audio recordings, but the primary focus of my research has been a material analysis of the technology used by King Tubby to produce records from 1972 to 1979 at 18 Dromilly Avenue, Kingston Jamaica. Since King Tubby’s studio no longer exists in the form it took in the 1970s some of the technical details remain speculative. However, the MCI mixing desk, the centrepiece of his studio, currently resides in the collection of the Experience Music Project, Seattle, and I have been able to examine it in its current condition. In the absence of written records or film footage of King Tubby’s own studio practice, I have used footage of one of his apprentices, Lloyd ‘Prince Jammy’ James, to work out some details of signal routing and performance practice within the Dromilly Avenue studio, but given the highly reflexive nature of this studio practice and the inevitable presence of feedback systems (both figurative and literal in the case of tape delay) some of the most valuable insights have come from recreations of the studio setup that I have made and incorporated into my own creative music practice.