or better or worse, we here at Stylus, in all of our autocratic consumer-crit greed, are slaves to timeliness. A record over six months old is often discarded, deemed too old for publication, a relic in the internet age. That's why each week at Stylus, one writer takes a look at an album with the benefit of time. Whether it has been unjustly ignored, unfairly lauded, or misunderstood in some fundamental way, we aim with On Second Thought to provide a fresh look at albums that need it.

Welcome to the birth of the remix. Today, when any kid with a laptop can be a DJ, and Kylie performs a bootleg version of her chart-topper on TV, the practice has become so commonplace that it seems more quaint than revolutionary. Yet revolutionary it was: the studio had been used as an instrument before, with the likes of Martin and Spector using their skills at the mixing board to augment the bands they worked with, but never with such aggressive minimalism. The creators of dub stripped songs down to their raw bones, dispensing with vocals, letting instruments fade in and out, seeing how much they could remove from a track without destroying the essence of the song. A key concept in Japanese art is ma: the empty space that surrounds and encompasses that which is seen, lending weight to what has been explicitly portrayed and suggesting the part of the image that was left out. Dub is the science of exploring the space between the notes that are heard, of implying the presence of music by removing it from the song.

It helped that the original songs were of exceptional quality. Augustus Pablo assembled a crack team of session musicians to record material for his releases, including Robbie Shakespeare (later of Sly & Robbie) and members of Lee Perry’s house band, the Upsetters. Floating above the driving rhythms of the band were the haunting, mournful tones of Pablo’s melodica. Usually considered a child’s toy, the producer made it the basis of his signature sound: swirling minor-key melodies creating an otherworldly ambience. Between 1972 and 1975, this band laid down and released the tracks seen here, giving the original a-side to a vocalist, while the b-side was devoted to King Tubby’s dub version of the song. Taking the source tapes for each song, Tubby manipulated and mixed each song into wildly experimental explorations of sound and space, later compiled on this album.

The title track is considered, and rightly so, to be the preeminent example of the dub format. Based on Jacob Miller’s "Baby I Love You So", the vocals appear just often enough to remind the listener of the melody, managing a few words before dissolving in a flutter of echoes. A skittering, clattering rhythm (reminiscent of two-step garage) propels the song forward, while bursts of guitar and melodica shift between speakers before floating off into the ether in search of Miller. Spare and eerie, the song is suffused with a sense of longing that makes it one of the most emotionally jarring songs here.

A fine example of Pablo’s “Far East” sound is found on "Stop Them Jah", with its simple melodica motif echoed by the horn section. Another highlight is "Each One Dub", which opens with the band fully present. Upon Miller’s (again the vocalist) entrance, Tubby brings the entire track to a stop, holding for several beats of complete silence before letting the rhythm come back in and build to a triumphant climax. It’s a display of supreme confidence in his skill, and of the power of the song to maintain momentum through the silence.

Pablo would go on to further develop his distinct vision of roots reggae, and King Tubby would be responsible for several more classics, including Blackboard Jungle Dub (his collaboration with Lee Perry), but this album remains as one of the defining moments of Jamaican music, where dancehall experimentation showed that it could work as serious music, and the potential of spatial dynamics was truly realized. This was music that was heady and intense, but which never sacrificed accessibility for the sake of artifice. One of the cornerstones of Jamaican music, King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown is one of those albums which is just as enjoyable whether studied on headphones or blasted through a club system, and a bonafide classic.