Madman skank

REDISCOVERIES

- LARRY BIRNBAUM

Whip dem, whip dem," sings Junior Byles on "Beat Down Babylon," to the accompaniment of whip cracks that recall the ones on Frankie Laine's "Mule Train." Produced by Mitch Miller some 20 years before Lee "Scratch" Perry produced Byles's reggae hit, "Mule Train" helped establish "the primacy of the producer-even more than the artist, the accompaniment, or the material," according to author Will Friedwald, who adds that "Miller also conceived of the idea of the pop record 'sound' per se: not so much an arrangement or a tune, but an aural texture (usually replete with extramusical gimmicks) that could be created in the studio."

Doubtless unaware of Miller's contributions, Perry played a similarly pivotal role in Jamaica as producer and performer, a pioneer of the hard-pounding dub style that influenced punk, hip-hop, house, techno, and more. He mixed and remixed his recordings, removing and replacing the vocals, pumping up the bass, adding echo and reverb together with various instrumental and noninstrumental effects to create a quirky, densely layered sound that exuded warmth and power at some cost to conventional audio quality.