[BACK TO THE LAB with The Mad Professor -- by spence d. ] Dub essentially began as an economical traveling music show featuring DJs (known as MCs in the U.S.) and selectors (a.k.a. DJs) who carted records and amplifiers to and from gigs throughout the Jamaican townships. Since those humble beginnings dub has spread into the massive club scenes of both Europe and America. Mad Professor (a.k.a. Neil Fraser) entered the world of dub back in 1980 and over the past 16 years has become one of the premier wizards of the genre. Operating out of a vast studio expanse in Britain, he is a sonically deranged madmen, a veritable "Dub Warrior" belonging to an elite cipher of artists which includes King Tubby and Lee "Scratch" Perry. He is easily one of the most prolific creators in the medium, having released in excess of a 100 albums and performed infinite remixes for such acts as Massive Attack, Sade and Pato Baton. What separates The Professor's work from that of other dub artists is his reliance on synthesized sounds; he religiously incorporates bleeps, whirs and other electronic machinations, allowing them to rhythmically collide with the more roots oriented vibes created by live guitar, bass, keyboards and horns. The Mad Professor's oeuvre is filled with relaxed layers of steamy groove, intermittently injected with echo effects and gratuitous back masked vocal collages. All of which is seamlessly interwoven amongst tight grooves with serpentine agility, helping create a dense form of mellow, low-end ambient music. The overall effect is a soothing, low impact vibe. The Mad Professor continues to create captivating soundtracks consisting of searing mental mood music that's just perfect for stimulating the inner soul. --------------------------------------------------- JetPack: How'd you get the name The Mad Professor? Mad Professor: I guess it started in school, y'know. I mean instead of going like a normal kid and playing football and cricket I would be messin' around wit wires. And when I was like 9 or 10 I built my first radio from scratch. No books, no nothing, I just built a radio. I don't know why, I guess I was just messin' around with different diodes and transistors and I picked up signals. And from then on I was hooked, from then on I was Mad Professor. The other kids couldn't understand it. That was in the West Indies. Guyana. JetPack: When did you make the move to London? Mad Professor: At age 13 I moved to London. My father was living in London so I moved to London to join him. The rest of my family stayed in Guyana. JetPack: So when did you first set up shop, y'know, start a studio? Mad Professor: I started a studio in '79 'cuz of my passion for electronics and I liked music, I though 'Well, let me start a studio, let me make some recordings.' which I started. I bought this house in South London and in the front room I decided I wouldn't have chairs and tables but I would build myself my mixin' desk, buy a few tape machines and build some echoes and reverbs and things like that. Just experiment. This is in the 70s. I mean it probably started a bit earlier if you really want to track it down. It probably started in '75 when I bought a tape machine, a kind of domestic, semi-professional tape machine called the Akai 4000-DS, when it was still in existence. But it started then and I was so happy with that tape machine, but it couldn't do all the things I wanted to do like record in sync. So I went further and I bought more equipment and around '76-'77 I just got into dubbin', y'know and I just started to develop it. So by '79 my studio was ready for some kind of recording and I had bands comin' in. JetPack: What's the story behind the name of your studio, Ariwa? Mad Professor: From '79 I decided to call it Ariwa. And I was playing with some names and I was thinkin' 'OK, maybe I'll call it Fraser Sound Lab,' using my surname and then I resorted to Ariwa 'cuz that was a name I picked up while working with a few guys at some electronics firm, and it was a Nigerian word meaning sound and noise and music and everything. Well the name is really Ariwo and I play with it and said Ariwa sound a little bit more user friendly and that was it. JetPack: So is the studio still in that same house in South London? Mad Professor: No, no I'm not livin' in that house. No, No I'm not livin' in that house anymore. I still have it, but I don't live there. I just rent it out. Oh yeah, the studio...from that house the studio moved a few times. After I got going then after a year or two the neighbors started to complain, y'know? 'Cuz in those days it was no electronic drums, it was real drums and real piano, so you have some rock bands comin' and bangin' and y'know through the floorboards people could hear it and the neighbors soon had enough of that, y'know, so I had to move. So then I moved to the first commercial premises which was Peckham, a place called Gaultry Road, Peckham. And I was there for like, umm, four years. We did from Dub Me Crazy Pt. 1 to, well Part 1 was actually done in my house and tings like that, but I moved and Part 1 'till Part 5 was done, well Part 1 was done in the house, but was mixed at Peckham and the rest were recorded in Peckham up until Part 5 and by then the Ariwa catalog was up to ARI LP 025. So I'd done 25 albums and that was four years later, that was around '85-'86 when Peckham is a ghetto area, a cheap area and the studio was in a basement and it was a rough area, y'know like goin' in Crenshaw or somethin' like that, a real ghetto area, where in fact I lost a lot of my serious clients who were just afraid of goin' in there to hire a studio and the studio got broken into and I just got pissed off so I thought 'Lemme git out of here.' And I moved back home for about 6 months, created a studio, again. By then I was just working more for the label, it wasn't that much of a commercial studio. Then I found this premises later where I live, I live there, and that's where we are now, that's Whitehorse Lane and that's the present HQ of the label. JetPack: Tell me about the equipment you use...did you start out with a 4-Track, and then gradually upgrade into high-end equipment? Mad Professor: Oh yeah, I started out with 4-Track, but now we got several tings. Now it's crazy, I mean if you want to be technical about the list we got two 24-track machines in the main studio and I've got 16-track 1/2 inch as well there. I've got A-DAT as well there. What else do I have...? Well, those are the main formats, and, y'know I tend to go from anything to anything, but I've been through...after the 4-Track I leapt up to 1/2 inch 8-track with a Tascam, then I went 16-track, 2 inch with an Ampex and that also had an 8-track, 1 inch headblock and that was going sweet. Then I went 16-track, 2 inch with a very cheap machine called Aces. That was a bit of a nightmare, but I was learning. Then I leaped straight into 24-track, 2-inch around '84 and I got an Ampex MM-1000 that was in Virgin's Barge Studio. And that came from 'The Barge.' And that was a great machine, y'know. That machine actually, it just needed tweakin' up with some bits and straight away it started to make hits, y'know. I think I made some of my best recordings on that machine. Well, Like Dub Me Crazy Part 5 and a few hits, things like Pato Banton, The Mad Professor Captures Pato Banton and then Macka B's Sign Of The Times and The Sandra Girls' Country Life, y'know it was a very good honeymoon period for us as a label. JetPack: Tell me about the Barge... Mad Professor: The Barge. Virgin had a studio on a boat on the Thames called 'The Barge.' I don't know if you heard about it. Well, that's in the '70s and it was a popular studio for them. JetPack: What about your propensity for utilizing weird electronic sounds and mixing them in with the more traditional dub riddims? Mad Professor: Well I guess because my background being more technical and being more electronics geared, I guess it reflected that. Whereas most people in the music business now as producers or engineers, most of them are from a musical background, I would dare say. So, umm, if I go into a room and there is a desk and some effects and some instruments , I'd be more drawn to the effects on the desk than to the instruments because I'm not really an instrumentalist. I like to go inside the effects and understand what makes them tick and vary it, vary the parameters as much as possible to get out as many things as you could. Like turn it upside down, like take it to the brink of distortion and beyond and really fuck it up. JetPack: What about your influences? Did Lee Scratch Perry influence you at all, since he's usually regarded as the Godfather of dub? Mad Professor: Yeah, Perry's been an influence. I think people like Joe Gibbs and Errol Thompson, I really love that sound, the Joe Gibb's studio in the seventies. Not so much Pablo, but Tubby, yeah...because Pablo, once again, is a musician and I'm more influenced by technical people really. Tings like the Motown sound and the way it evolved. The Philadelphia Sound, I find things like that fascinating, y'know. Very, very interesting. Dennis Bovell, y'know? JetPack: Tell me about your remix work with Massive Attack... Mad Professor: Well they called me, you know. I mean various people call me to do different things, you know, you look at it and decide 'well what could I do with it?', you know? Whether there's space for a concept or whether it's just a waste of time...And I thought okay, it was possible that we could bring some action out of this and I mean it started as a single remix job, it was really a job to remix their new single and then after I'd done that they asked me to listen to some more and see if I liked it and see what we could do. That's the first step, you know. Especially for me, I'm normally quite busy, you know, either doing things for other labels or things for my own label, I'd rather do things for my own label, but it doesn't pay as quick as other labels...so normally since my time is quite valuable I tend to look at a project and think 'yeah, okay, maybe this could bring out something nice...' JetPack: You're pretty prolific. You've got more than a 100 records to your credit. How have you managed to keep working? Mad Professor: My musical career is about 15-16 years now, yeah I put out about 10 albums in a year, not necessarily all Mad Professor because I got different productions but...well you know, I'm a worker, to be honest with you, these guys I work with they will tell you when I'm in town everyday I'm in the studio, I mean the only time I'm not in town is if I'm sick, you know, I don't stay home. I've got a family, but I don't stay home. I get out and work, I say 'c'min the studio, let's jam, let's jam this, let's mess around with this, hey why not let's build a rhythm and I personally believe that everyday in one's life one should produce something, one should do something, you know? JetPack: What do you mean 'one should produce something everyday'? Mad Professor: Anything. Do something. If you don't then you might as well be dead. Everyday you should do something, I mean like you, you decide today you gonna come and talk to Mad Professor, you know. That's fine, you're doing something, you know? Whether or not it will lead to anything, who knows? Maybe some kid read it and say 'Shit, I want to do that.' Who knows? It's always good to do something and this is how you respect yourself and it keeps you from gettin' into mischief as well. And that's why I personally like to do something, even if it's gonna cost me money by bringin' a musician and payin' him some money and sayin' 'Well look man, play on this track for me...' and then the ideas start to run and my brain start thinkin'...I mean even if I call Black Steel and I say 'Hey Black Steel, c'mon let's jam out a couple of tracks' and I've got no concept in mind and we started jammin' and I start to think something 'Ahhh, maybe I could have an album, Fly Me To The Moon, or something like that and then based around the theme Fly Me To The Moon then you get involved in some space thing and next thing you know you start to get excited because you start to take a concept from nothing and you think 'Shit, well this is great, Fly Me To The Moon, then you look for some spacecraft sounds and the whole thing, next thing you know 6 weeks or 2 months you got an album called Fly Me To The Moon or Dub Me To The Moon... JetPack: Do you play any instruments? I mean would you consider yourself a musician? Mad Professor: No I'm not a musician, but I have various ideas. I might have a little line in my head and say 'Look try and play this line' and he might try to play my line and end up with another line or something, you know? But we tend to jam things out, 'cuz even though I'm not a musician I do have a lot of melodies in my head. JetPack: What about sampling? Mad Professor: I've got samplers but I don't swear by samplers, I don't really like to use samplers. I've got stuff on tape and I'm creating stuff through the effects. In other words we built the studio on the stage, the whole studio. A miniature version of what we have in Whitehorse lane, and I rebuilt it on-stage. It's all contained and then you can take out what you wanna take out and put in what you wanna put in. Sometimes you probably notice it's just bass only, boom-boom-boom, sometimes drums only and sometimes vocal and echo it whaa-whaa-whaa. It's a new concept in entertainment. Some people can't understand it. Some people love it. For some people that is the ultimate show. But some people really and truly they want to see a live band on stage. JetPack: So then you're essentially taking the classic sound system and elevating it to the next level? Mad Professor: It's not just the record and dub playing and it's boring, boring mono or boring stereo. A lot of people don't really see that kind of innovation within it. Well I think that's really the wave of the future entertainment. I mean I don't know when it's going to catch on more to people. I mean I don't mind, but I know someday it's gonna catch on because it must be boring just playing a record or playing a DAT. It must be boring. And when you have the multi-track...I guess the problem for most people is that their catalog of stuff that they have on multi-track is quite limited. And it's probably silly because record companies don't actually send you their multi-tracks unless you are part of the production. So maybe it's not easy for "Mr. Average" to go out their and get a multi-track. And sometimes I've got maybe 5 different vocals on a particular track and I could just cut out some of them and then rewind it and play another song if I want. yes, It's possible to do that. In fact that's only the tip of the iceberg because I've got a lot more ideas developing to expand that show. And the next time I come here and do a dub show I intend to do some really tricky stuff, you know? Which I can't go into, but I've got the concepts in my head. JetPack: A lot of your songs have political titles. Sometimes you throw spoken word snippets into the mix like you're trying to put a point across. Are you trying to create soundtracks for the mind, body and soul? Mad Professor: That's exactly what I'm tryin' to do. I'm trying to invoke the feeling. Sometimes the music has the spirit and then you can feel it, you know? And sometimes you get snatches of a lyric that might plant something in your head. Like on Black Liberation Dub we have the lyric that goes "Right now people beware 'cuz we're in the age of the psychological warfare-fare-fare-fare-fare-fare..." and then it starts to get militant with the horns comin' up bom-bom-bwam-bwam-bwam-bom, so it's militant and it's really aggressive and doo-doo-doo-duuung-duung and you can feel some kind of emotion. So you know it's there, even without words. It's meant to go into the mind where words can't go. And sometimes there are no words to go. JetPack: Tell me about the whole Dub Me Crazy series... Mad Professor: Well I'm on to 12 but it's not going any further than 12. No more Dub Me Crazy. Some people are sayin' "Ohhh..." but you see Black Liberation Dub is like a different concept for me. There's a third Black Liberation Dub that I'm working on right now in the studio. It's called Evolution of Dub. Hard to tell, but yeah, I'll probably stretch it a bit more if there's a lot of ideas there for that one. Dub Me Crazy is just like freak out people with the effects, you know? Like do some impossible tings, you know? Like have tings going from...I mean, okay, when I started it there weren't that much effects there were just echo, reverb, phasers and harmonizer and as I got more and more there were more developments, samplers and tings. It was just to do tricks, perform trick, always surprise the listener. You could be sittin' there and suddenly something would move and make you feel like you were flippin' head over heels or you know, backwards sounds and just totally fuck up your mind by listening to it. That was the concept with Dub me Crazy. JetPack: So what about the concept behind Black Liberation Dub? Mad Professor: The concept with Black Liberation Dub, similar concept, but more on a subtle, in other words, against racism. Just to remind people that, well yeah, we went through this slavery period and you know, some might be free but some are not free and some don't want to be free, and some could never be free, you know, and all that jazz. Because some people have this way of sayin' 'Well look man, this slavery thing was like 100 years-200 years ago and black people have been free for a long time...' yet a lot of black people don't even realize that they are free or don't even want to be free. So it's just to remind people. It's not sayin' 'Well, look, you know, go out and kill a white man but just to remember that yeah, there was this thing and we've got to make a positive address of racism and racist activities. So that's it really. It's just a kind of subtle thing. The first one was kinda funny in that it came out the same time Mandela was set free. It can't be overnight because it takes a lot of changes to really bring people to it and you know same ting with the second, Anti-Racist Broadcast. That's actually a true story when it started, cuz I was in France and this guy came up to me, an Italian living in the south of France and he said 'Oh Professor, Professor, since I heard your music I love black people...' and I thought shit, this is fuckin' good, I must use this. Cuz I mean it's simple but it's sayin' something and it's sayin' the importance of music in communication between people. So I said 'Yeah, all right could you say it again? Here's my machine, say it again.' And I recorded it and that was a couple of years ago so I kept it on tape and I used it [for Anti-Racist Dub]. JetPack: So you carry a DAT with you all the time then? Mad Professor: Yeah, I've got my DAT machine and microphones. Sometimes I miss things, you know. JetPack: What do you look for, as far as taping stuff with the DAT? Do you tape people, or just miscellaneous sounds? Mad Professor: Both. It could be anything. I mean like that one did find itself on an album. You're gonna hear him and it says on the sleeve Pepe from wherever. I think that was his name. Yeah man, anything can happen. It's a record, anything could happen. JetPack: What kind of DAT do you use? Mad Professor: I have a Sony D7, it's not as good as the D3, but it's all right. The D3 was a brilliant design, brilliant machine. But I guess, typical Sony, it was too good so they took it off the market and bring a cheaper one in and call it D7. They always come with something brilliant and you'd better buy it, especially when it's a revolutionary product. Or you'd better buy two 'cuz it's gonna be off and when it's off...They don't know what they're doin', man. That's why even musicians collect a lot of classical keyboards 'cuz they don't make them the same the next time around, the Mark 2 is never as good as the Mark 1. The DX-7 is a good example. I just bought an old Mark 1 because I think it's brilliant keyboard., but they don't make it no more. JetPack: How would you describe The Mad Professor vibe? Mad Professor: Oh boy, it's hard for me because I'm so within it I don't know if I could really accurately or fairly give a description, you know? It's probably easier for someone whose not so involved in it to give a description. But I would say it's the kind of thing where you could expect anything at anytime and no two shows are gonna be the same, you know? Definitely no two shows are gonna be the same. I'm constantly changing the shows and changing like the artists and musicians and performers. And I don't like bringing the same set up twice or else I find 'shit, I'm getting bored', you know? JetPack: So is that why every album has a different concept? Mad Professor: Yeah, every album has got a different concept and got a different set of musicians working on different things. You know the whole thing has got to be changing because if not people can say 'Well, I know what to expect. I ain't gonna buy that record.' I mean if you put on Dub Me Crazy Part 1 and then Black Liberation Dub, you know and even though it's two dub albums it's two different, totally different dub albums, you know. Maybe one or two cuts are the same, but the songs are not the same, you know. JetPack: Why are you based out of London as opposed to Jamaica? Mad Professor: Well there's quite a few reggae now based out[side] of Jamaica. There's quite a few, I must tell you, in fact we were checkin' things out and probably now more than 50% or 60% of reggae is not made in Jamaica, and that's probably been the case for the past 5 to 6 years. There's a lot of pockets of strong reggae growing up. London is probably the largest reggae community outside of Jamaica. Then you've got places like France and stuff. New York, funny enough, even though there's a lot of black people and West Indians, I don't think it's developed that widely in New York as one would have expected. I don't know if one would agree with me there, but...[dancehall] exactly and I think because New York is not that far from Jamaica, I mean New York I find...you see there's a lot of white guys and other ethnic minorities in New York that actually are into dub, quite a lot, it's not so for the black community. You find a similar thing in England the people who are into dub are actually English people, you know, it's not really West Indians. There's still a few, whereas like, say 15 years ago when we started making dub albums it was like 80%-75% West Indian and 25% white people and now it's the opposite way around. You've got a lot of white groups in France, In Germany, you've got a lot of white groups as well, playing reggae. Strong community. You've got people in Sweden playing it, strong, strong pockets. Look at Africa, you've got people like Lucky Due and Magic, guys playing all kinds of reggae. With my reggae, how is it accepted in England, well you see, again Ariwa, the label has got such a variety of reggae, you know like we've got the smooth sounds of lover's rock. We are like the main label to keep really it goin' when everyone else think 'Well it's not worth a fucking shit. We ain't gonna make no lover's rock.' We always make lover's rock and we've got some tasty women singers who make lover's rock. And it's very popular in places like Japan and the Philippines and in London itself, for that matter. The black community love it in London. We have the heavy roots stuff. You know we are a roots label. People like the Macka B album they're roots. The U-Roy, the Pato Banton, they're all roots stuff. Then we got the dub thing, which I do, you know and people like Lee Perry and Jah Shaka. It's all from the same stem. So there is such a spectrum on the label that you can't really put us into a bag. There is some of our stuff that the black community likes and some of it that the black community don't understand why we're doin' it. And I guess the dub stuff, they won't understand why we're doin' it 'cuz it's too arty, you know. Whereas something like the lover's rock or a type of dancehall melody where people can sing along and get into it, yeah they'd be into it. And then the white guys who are buying the dub will say 'Oh well...' they can't handle it . JetPack: So what are you workin' on now, what does the future hold in store for The Mad Professor? Mad Professor: I'm working on so many things. I'm working on Part 3 of Black Liberation Dub. I've got an album with a guy called Benjamin Zephani, he's a dub poet, he's a bit like Linton Kwesi Johnson. He's really straight talkin', he always take the piss out of the police and the royal family and tings like that. I've got another album with Jah Shaka. I've got loads of things. And I've got a lot of young artists, unknowns that I'm doing stuff with. I just need to find the time to finish it and find the time to bang them out, one after the other. Just keep them comin', mahn! Article and Interview By: spence d. © JetPack Digital Media. All Rights Reserved.