Hometown: Kingston, Jamaica

Dub was born in the early 70s of the Jamaican music business's mean economic circumstances. It was cheaper to put one song on a single than two, so record labels encouraged engineers to liven up instrumental versions of the a-side with echoes, drop-outs, and all manner of studio trickery. The style caught on with the Jamaican record-buying public and expatriates took it to England, where it was championed by punks like The Clash and The Raincoats.

Dub's golden age ended in the early 80s when reggae producers turned to dinky-sounding computerized accompaniment, but in the 90s the crossover success of the Massive Attack sound system and the tireless championing of dub by post-rockers like Tortoise have renewed interest in the style and spurred a plethora of reissues.

If you want to sample the genre but don't know where to start, consider this swell, clinker-free collection. It features all the key names and a few undersung obscurities, and it'll give you a good handle on the virtues of dub as well as the variations worked by its leading practitioners.

Using outrageously outmoded gear, Lee Perry processed horns and guitars into unrecognizably psychedelic sounds that swirled around steely bass lines and implacable drums. King Tubby preferred to accentuate unstoppable rhythm tracks by dropping everything else in and out of the mix, while Augustus Pablo essayed indelible melodica solos over gentler, more pastoral rhythms.