Review of Messian Dread's debut

As MP3 has become a popular online distribution format for unsigned musicians, sites like MP3.com have helped to encourage new bands to forego the major labels and put out their own music. Through sales of "DAM" (Digital Automatic Music) CDs, which combine regular CD tracks and MP3s on the same disc, artists can release their homegrown music without having to worry about the costs associated with pressing up their own disc and accepting credit card orders.

As one would expect, the format is popular with high school bands and rappers, but one of the most successful and professional efforts come from a genre that one would not normally associate with the Internet: classic dub music.

Messian Dread (located at http://www.mp3.com/mdread/) is a musician based in the Netherlands who specializes in original style, bass heavy, echo-induced Jamaican dub. He started 10 years ago with some of the cheapest equipment imaginable -- he says the keyboard and tape recorder were "more children's toys" than recording equipment. As personal computers came into the mainstream, he began composing MIDI dub music. He gained some Net fame, and those MIDI files are still found around the Web.

But now he's stepped up the intensity and the quality, and the resulting sound is much more professional. Influences from King Tubby, King Jammys, and Jah Shaka are evident. Pulsing bass, conscious vocals with heavy echo, and wicked keys are layered over slow grooving riddims. There hasn't been much dub of this style or quality released in the last five years.

Messian Dread has a firm grasp of dub's history and the instruments that work most effectively in it. He plays handmade congo drums in a Nyabinghi style on "Ethopian Dub," follows the rub-a-dub style that the Roots Radics did so well on "Judgement Dub," and experiments with newer echo techniques on "99 Dub Street."

Messian Dread's first DAM CD is titled, simply, "Messian Dread 1." It's 10 tracks deep, running just short of one hour, and, as mentioned above, has each track in MP3 format on the disc as well. Top that off with a price of only $4.99 (and shipping is less than $1) and you have some unbeatable new music for your ears.

A second album is underway, temporarily titled only "dis 1 under construction" and has six tracks thusfar. The price is also set at $4.99 and should be a worthwhile purchase when all the tracks are completed.

You can hear all of Messian Dread's tracks in Real Audio and MP3 format on the mp3.com sponsored site (listed above), or you can stop by his personal web page at http://dit.is/the_dubroom/

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