In this patrons-only episode, Jeremy and Tim begin a multi-part exploration of what we're calling Heavy Dub Theory: a deep dive on the aesthetic, musicological and theoretical understandings of dub. We start with a discussion of the materiality of bass as expressed in the concept of Bass Materialism - how bass frequencies behave in space, are felt in our bodies, and how bass music rejected and upset prevailing musical expressions of white heteropatriarchal culture.

We also consider how dub composition is organised around subtraction rather than addition - a fact it shares with the contemporaneous school of Minimalism - and make the case that dub is anti-climactic, anti-telos, and ultimately breaks with traditional musical conceptions of time all together.

We'll be back in a fortnight with the next iteration of Heavy Dub Theory.

Produced and edited by Matt Huxley.

Tracklist:

Steve Reich - Come Out

King Tubby & Observer All Stars - Rema Dub

King Tubby & Jacob Miller - City Of The Weakheart Dub

Peter Tosh - Mystic Man

Books:

Paul C. Jasen - The Low End Theory; Bass, Bodies and the Materiality of Sonic Experience

Julian Henriquez - Sonic Bodies

Steve Goodman - Sonic Warfare

Jeremy Gilbert & Ewan Pearson - Discographies

Tricia Rose - Black Noise

Henri Bergson - Matter and Memory