Dennis Bovell
PIONEERING producer, songwriter, dubmaster and now MBE, Dennis Bovell has been busy as ever as he heads towards his eighth decade. In the last year alone, there have been ongoing dub reimaginings for the likes of Animal Collective and The Smile, various archival and new Bandcamp releases, and Y In Dub, a new version of The Pop Group’s seminal Bovell-produced debut.
“I got to get back into those tracks and marvel at the sounds I’d put down on the tape,” he explains of the latter. “They’re mad about dubbing, Mark Stewart especially, so they were going crazy!”
His latest project is a career-spanning anthology, The Dubmaster, so Bovell’s agreed to take Uncut through nine of the pivotal albums he’s helped create, from Matumbi’s reggae classics through to production work for The Pop Group, The Slits and Fela Kuti, and right on to his latterday dub work.
“I have no problem calling the shots,” he says of his firm approach to making music. “You need that iron fist. If I didn’t like something, I let it be known. And if I thought it could be better done some other way, I let that be known as well!”
MATUMBI SEVEN SEALS
HARVEST, 1978
The debut album by the London reggae group, featuring Bovell on guitar
Our first studio session was in October 1971, so last year marked 50 years since the first Matumbi recording. When I ran the band like a totalitarian regime, it seemed to work a bit better, but then everyone went, “Urgh, it’s a bit totalitarian, yeah?” So I went, “All right, we’re all equal, everyone’s got an equal
