Classic Album: Renegade Soundwave, In Dub

Mute, 1990

After the masterpiece of genre-splicing breaks, samples, and electronica that was their debut album, Soundclash, Dance music pioneers Renegade Soundwave followed it up with a stripped back Dub version. They may have lost the vocals, but the trio of Gary Asquith, Danny Briottet and Carl Bonnie certainly added some extra bite with their trailblazing work in the studio on, what is arguably their finest work, In Dub.

Soundclash tracks like Pocket Porn, Traitor, and Blue Eyed Boy got put through the Renegade Soundwave blender. New textures were spun out, and further low-end theories explored. Manning the desk at the Mute record label’s studio, which they made their home for an intense six-month shut in, the three band members unified, splintered, fused, and broke musical soundscapes down.

“We pretty much lived in the studio working on that album,” says RSW’s Danny Briottet. “They had a nice Amek desk with some automation, which made things easier. We recorded everything to 24-track on two-inch tape. All the tracks would be full and hardware would be all over the room, connected together with dodgy leads. It was like a big train of gear, but we made it work.”

The Soundclash material splintered off into bold new directions. Fresh material was added to the mix and ideas rejected previously were pushed to the front of the queue, their space and barrenness now a virtue for dubbed out path finding, just like their favourite Reggae producers of old might have done.

“We did In Dub partly because of our love of Dub Reggae,” says Briottet. “I grew up with it. You’d buy a Dennis Brown album or something, and a coupla months later they’d put a Dub version of it out, so it was a natural thing to do for us, from our point of view. Dub is just so free. We were in that studio constantly and just poured it all out, you know? We just didn’t stop. We just got our teeth into it. It was a very creative period of time.”