Deconstructing The Rhythm - An interview with drummer Style Scott from Dub Syndicate

As a youngster, Lincoln "Style" Scott would often hang out at sound system dances and absorb the heavyweight dub sounds popular at that time. Reggae was on fire. Clashes between gangs supported by rival political parties were the order of the day. Political unrest was growing beyond measure. Poverty was as widespread as ever and music was the only means of expression. In the 1970s, reggae was on fire but dub was white-hot. It was burning secretly, deep down in the anguished souls of the rebels, with cymbal crashes bursting through sound barriers and echoing into dark distances while powerful, flashing drum rolls cut the silence, cut the space, erupting from within like a long-suppressed volcano, filling the gaping hole left behind by repression and suffering. Men like Lee "Scratch" Perry and King Tubby were producing the sounds of dub and breaking all rules, inventing many of the music production techniques now carelessly taken for granted. Dub had been unleashed, but how many would actually take its hand and walk together the same path?

Style Scott has been recognized by many as an important dub developer, primarily through his drumming and songwriting work with the powerful Dub Syndicate. He began his long reggae and dub career while still in the army. After duty he would often meet up with other musicians on the street and go and sit in on some of their rehearsals. Sometimes he would have the chance to beat around on the drums, and this was when he was first spotted. In fact, soon enough he began doing session work for various recording studios, laying rhythm tracks which in those early days were mostly covers of Studio One rhythms. Things started getting serious at the end of the Seventies when he, bassist Errol "Flabba Holt" Carter and guitarist Eric "Bingi Bunny" Lamont formed the legendary Roots Radics. The group quickly became the most popular Jamaican backing band in the early 1980s, creating a new, slower and much sparser type of rhythm - precise and hypnotic at the same time. They provided the rhythm section for many important and popular artists, before the arrival of the digital revolution almost swept away the need for reggae musicians in the studio. It was while playing with the Roots Radics that the drummer was first spotted by the late Prince Far-I, who would ultimately have an important indirect role regarding Scott's current band.

Style Scott and the now-famous Adrian Sherwood first met while Scott was on tour in England, backing Prince Far-I. At the time Adrian was working as a manager, organizing all of the practical sides of the tour by Prince Far-I and the Creation Rebel backing band, which featured Scott on drums. In 1980 Adrian had created his own label, "On-U Sound", and it was through subsequent studio projects in which Scott participated - sometimes staying as long as 6 months in England - that Dub Syndicate slowly emerged. As the years went by and the number of dub albums grew (including important collaborations with Lee Perry), Style gradually became the band's driving force and, from the early 1990s onwards, he has actually been building the rhythm tracks in Jamaica and only at a later date taken them to London for overdubs and for the final mix. During the same period, Dub Syndicate became a real touring band.

Over the last few years, Style Scott has formed his own label called "Lion & Roots" (through which the latest Dub Syndicate albums get released) and has toured extensively throughout the world. One of his latest tours brought him to the Flog Auditorium in Florence (Italy), on the cold night of the 19th of November 2004, which is where I met up with him backstage to have a quick chat about dub...

How do you think the audience response has changed over the years with regards to dub? You've been quite faithful to the original early 80s dub format...
Well, as you know, with Dub Syndicate generally speaking it started in the 80s with Adrian Sherwood, and we've been staying with that old-school style. But, at the same time, we try to keep it unique, you know? We take it out of the old-school style and we add little colours to it and sort of put it into a feel which is totally different from every other dub, because most dubs are just the a-side's b-side. What we have always tried to do was de-construct a whole rhythm right down to the skeleton and emphasize for example the drum and bass, or add wild noises, put different faces, spoken word and make it all a little bit more interesting than what it was in the old King Tubby days. And it's very nice, a lot of people respond to it.

Has the response changed over the years?
It's changed as far as the audience is concerned. There's always a new audience coming, that's what I notice. Younger people are catching onto it more now. This generation I notice is real interested in what's going on in dub, you know what I mean? And that's good, you know, I like that. So, my plan is to take it out into the future. I don't want to keep it too old-school. I want it to carry something more futuristic and I want to blend it in with what's going on now. I'm planning to carry a few tracks to Massive Attack in London, to do a remix for us, and see if we can break over into a different market. But, you know, dub will always remain an interesting music and it will never die. Whoever comes and produces dub should try to make it a bit better than the old-school days, you know what I mean? Because dub is a very interesting kind of music. I know that because I've been with it for years - doing it live, doing albums. And I know the response I get back has been positive, you know what I mean? So I sort of like where it's going, you know... I like where it's going. And I'm gonna keep it there, you know? And take it further as well, as the years go by.

And what about links with modern dancehall culture and raggamuffin? Do you have any links to those areas or do you have a difficult relationship?
Well, it's just another part of the music - there's no difficulty with it. I don't have any difficulty with it because realistically I don't produce the dancehall type of music. I don't mess around with what they call dancehall today. I try to stay with what I love and what I know. I know dancehall riddims, of course, but it's not like I kind of produce or do dancehall music. I like the era I know which is the dub era and which is the original format of what reggae music is all about, right? I think I'll leave dancehall to Beenie Man and these guys. It's a good music and nothing is wrong with it, but it's just not my cup of tea. It's a different style. I don't like to jump over the fence too much. I like to stick with an objective, and so I think I'm gonna stick with this for a while, you know?


Mad Professor played here in Florence a few months ago. He was supposed to do live dubbing for the legendary Lee "Scratch" Perry and The Robotiks backing band, but Perry didn't turn up because he'd missed the plane...
Oh...

Mad Professor and The Robotiks played anyway and I had a chat with Mad Professor after the show. We were talking about dub and another interviewer who was present asked him about the connection between dub and smoking weed or drugs in general. Mad Professor's opinion was that a lot of people who do dub, who produce dub, who make dub, don't actually smoke weed. What do you think?
He may be right. He may be right because we kind of begin to associate people's habits with the music. And that's simplifying things totally, you know what I mean? There are young people who don't produce dub and smoke weed. Some of the producers who produce other types of music smoke weed while other non-dub producers don't smoke weed. So to actually say that the people who have produced dub are people who love getting high in that sense, well, there's no such truth to that. We don't want to start associating it to drugs, you know? It's a pure and clean music, yeah man.

Mad Professor says he doesn't smoke. And if we look at King Tubby, he didn't smoke either and he didn't even drink.
King Tubby was a gentleman... he was a gentleman.

Yes. And, curiously, it's been said that he liked to listen to jazz. It's been said that actually his favourite music was jazz. Do you think there are any connections between the improvisation in jazz and the origins of 70s dub?
Yes... yes, there are some inputs of jazz in dub. Of course. Yes, of course. But it's all about de-constructing, you know? That's what dub is... it's always a de-construct riddim. And it's taken from one level to another. Dub is a very unique form of reggae music and we try to keep it that way, you know what I mean? With Dub Syndicate, especially, we don't try to jump the gun and get too confused with what we're doing. We know what we want. We try to bring Dub Syndicate close to the Pink Floyd sort of thing.

Do you think dub is very mind-orientated, in the sense that there is a strong mental side to it, of experimentation and science?
There's a lot of scientific experimentation. If you listen to Dub Syndicate stuff you'll know about that. There's lots of science and there's also lots of technology that's been put into it by us over the years to take it to what it is today, you know? And we're still trying to improve.

Well, thanks for the chat.
Thank you.

Interview by Pavle Djukic 2004