Damaged vinyl

The debut Ghost Dubs album emerges on The Bug's Pressure label as the artist, also known as Michael Fiedler and Jah Schulz, follows up two prior experimental dub LPs put out via his 'Dub Over Science' series, the title of which tells you all there is to know about his approach to music production. Dub was never an entirely empirical process: though the archetypal dubbing engineer was historically often deemed just that - an "engineer" - this terminology is ironic since intuition, or "vibesmanship", is also essential to the craft. Bringing twelve zygomatic arse-zappers to our left and right canals (and, in the bass region, to our bodies), Ghost Dubs homages the blueprint drafted by the infamous Chain Reaction label, whose pioneering works laid the ground for all low-reg, factoryscape experimental dub records to follow. Best of this bunch are the least rhythmically deadlocked, 'Soul Craft' standing out in its use of freeform shark-caged resonances, and 'True To Life' going steady but confidently on the triplets and alien gurgles.