Dubtribe Sound System: Bryant Street ---Ink Blot Magazine

Dubtribe Sound System: Bryant Street

at a glance...

Hometown: San Francisco, CA
Year Formed: 1989

Personnel:
Sunshine Jones
Moonbeam Jones

Related artists:
Doc Martin, DJ Corster, Cosmic Jason, Onionz and Master D, Trip'ta' Funk, Hesohi, DJ Blackstone, Greg Boyer

Notes:
Dubtribe is the musical brainchild of Sunshine and Moonbeam Jones, a pair of hippyish San Francisco clubbers shown The Way by house music. Their early singles and the Sound System album, released on Organico in 1994, showed a broad understanding of dance music from hip-hop to soulful garage, all framed by the positivity of rave. The single "Mother Earth" became something of an international hit and was highly influential on the emerging sound of the Chemical Brothers, while Dubtribe's reputation as a scintillating (and genuinely dynamic) live act made them one of the truly national forces in the North American dance underground. Things with Organico fell apart, and the band relocated to Jive Records, setting the stage for 1999's Bryant Street, the biggest-selling American house LP ever. Predictably enough, the relationship with the major-label Jive soured, and the Joneses turned their focus to running their own successful indie label, Imperial Dub.

Links:
Interview with Dubtribe

Visit the Imperial Dub website here.

Dubtribe Sound System
Bryant Street
Imperial Dub/Jive, Released 1999

Say what you like about Dubtribe, but they are virtually fearless. They sing about universal love, they rage against consumerism and hate and post-modern soullessness, and they wear their ethics on their sleeves. And they do it without an ounce of self-consciousness, because they've got the musical vision to back up even their biggest ideas.

Bryant Street may not be the first attempt to connect house music to its roots - certainly Masters At Work/Nuyorican Soul intended something similar - but it may be the most subtle and therefore the most successful. Here Dubtribe invoke '80s garage, '70s disco and large tracts of Latin jazz and funk while remaining effortlessly contemporary. This is not a history lesson, and "Samba Dub" and "Equitoreal" continue to prove it every weekend in the clubs.

Dubtribe know how to fracture the mechanized funk of house with fluid arrangements - organ stabs, flutes, gurgling bass, and most importantly, live, syncopated percussion. This album is boiling over with all manner of conga madness, and even the string-cushioned corners of "El Regalo De Amor" and "Wednesday Night" and the vibrating depths of "Feelin' Alright Now" and "Loneliness in Dub" brim with percussive life.

Beautifully sequenced and mixed into a continuous whole, the result is an inclusive, irresistible piece of dance music that perfectly contextualizes their message of unity, awareness, and love. When you're this good, it's easy to be brave.

If you like Dubtribe, check out:
Dubtribe Sound System
Basement Jaxx Remedy
Moodyman A Silent Introduction/Mahogany Brown
Black Science Orchestra Walter's Room
Deep Dish Junk Science
Funkadelic One Nation Under A Groove
Nuyorican Soul Nuyorican Soul
Cassius 1999
Nightmares on Wax Carboot Soul

-- jf

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