![]() Who would you bump into at a typical cutting house? He’s going to open a radio station in Ghana, for his sister. You’d have to ask Dread Lepke about that. Was there a link between early pirate radio, back in the early ‘80s, and cutting houses? The first few copies of the Pop Group album I cut, I lifted the cutter head before conventional standard dictated. ![]() If you printed a record like that, it would jump. The skid was a piece of information backwards that could trip the cutter head and make the cutter head think it’s a square wave, and think it can’t read it. Too much bass makes the wave got like that (shows jump in the air). Why could you not know that in your studio? Once I’d done it I needed to go to the cutting room to hear how they sounded. If you hear the 12” version you’ll hear it. I’d done what I call a skid mix, which involved lots of backwards sequencing. There was a song called 'Wheels Of Love'. That post-punk period was really interesting… He made me realise how far I could push that piece of plastic to reproduce and enhance, even, what you intended from the mixing room. There was another guy called Aaron Chakraverty at Master Rooms. Him and Graham, then he left and went and opened his new cutting rooms called Loud.Ĭan you give me an example from the time at Island, with John Dent, when something clicked for you as an artist? He built another cutting room called The Exchange in Camden. As cutting engineers in this country go, he’s the man. This guy has cut all Bob Marley and all U2. That’s where I cut The Slits, Linton Kwesi Johnson. John Dent was first called Sound Clinic and he was the cutting room that was attached to Island Records. I quickly stumbled on a guy called John Dent. LTS was owned by a friend of mine’s brother, Bill Farley in Tin Pan Alley, Denmark St. The dub cutters were John Hessell and a place in the West End called LTS, London Transcription Service. Was there overlap between what you’d call ‘wax culture’ and the uptown places? I wasn’t aiming at sound systems any more. D’you know, by the time Lovers Rock had hit I’d stopped using Hessle because by the time I cut Yuh Learn I’d learned not to cut my stereo tapes in mono any more. The invention of the cassette ruined it too. Lloyd Bradley told me that cutting houses had a very specific job in that world of reggae, and didn’t move out of that world until punk came along… Sly Dunbar had the same one on every tune! We called it "Flying Cymbal" but it was so infectious disco had it and called it disco. People would have thought it was all I could do. The intention was to make every tune with that drum beat in that reggae style, but the success of it… I couldn’t. By the time I done 'Silly Games', I showed them my craft and it was totally FM sounding and wasn’t off the radio – still isn’t off the radio! – and I’d created a new drum beat. I had to make sure my stuff was stinging. ![]() How much of a disadvantage were you at, making English reggae? And how much of a problem was it that you didn’t come from Jamaica in the first place ? ![]() In the second part of his interview about cutting houses, how disco stole Sly and Robbie's flying cymbal and turning sound system clashes into band clashes. Last time man like DB told all about his early days as a producer, and about hanging about outside cutting houses whilst Jah Shaka prepped his soundbombs. Emma Warren is back with the second part of her Dennis Bovell interview. ![]()
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