#christopher partridge

[gothmusiclatinamerica]

I was hoping to complete my video about the influence of dub reggae on goth music before the end of June, what with June being Caribbean Heritage Month. I don't think that's going to happen because I would like for it to be thorough, but in the mean time, here is one good resource.

[soundsystemcultureblog]

DUB IN BABYLON, CHRISTOPHER PARTRIDGE (2007)

“By stimulating the way sound-waves behave under water, the effects in dub and ambient hark back to our personal prehistory in the amniotic sea of the womb. It’s not for nothing that studio engineers talk of a recording being ‘dry’ when it’s devoid of reverb. The foetus can’t hear anything until the twenty-fourth week of pregancy, but after that it reacts to external sounds and bonds with the mother’s voice, which must reach its ears blurred and refracted through the fleshly prism of her body. With its submarine sonar FX and numinous reverberances, dub reggae invokes the blurry sonic intimacy of womb-time, the lost paradise before individuation and anxiety. This might also account for why dub foregrounds the bass (its frequencies are less localizable, more immersive and engulfing) and why dub reggae runs at tempos around 70-75bpm - that approximate the baby’s heartbeat in the womb”