Scientist

Overton Brown, Jamaica, West Indies Scientist burst onto the reggae scene in the early 70's with a reckless mixing style that seemed to outdo even King Tubby's wildest extravaganzas. He began his career as an engineer at King Tubby's in 1978. Shortly afterwards he became a protege of King Tubby, and swiftly gained a reputation with his unique mixing style. In 1980, the UK-based record company Greensleeves began to release the productions of top Jamaican producer Henry 'Junjo' Lawes Lawes, finding success with new singing sensation Barrington Levy, used Tubby's studio for his voicing and final mix-downs and offered Greensleeves a couple of dub albums mixed by Tubby's sensational young engineer, The Scientist, VS Prince Jammy (1980), mostly consisting of dub mixes of Barrington Levy tracks. This album was presented as The "Big Showdown" between the two dubmasters. The combination of heavyweight Roots Radics rhythms pitted against one another Greensleeves followed this album with another proclaiming The Scientist to be the Heavyweight Dub Champion. The Scientist soon became Jamaica's top recordimg engineer This led to a surge of albums mixed by The Scientsit from various sources. Greensleeves, in particular, continued to issue album after album.



In the 70's, I started building sound system audio amplifiers. I would then test the amplifier with test instruments to determine how the amplifier was performing. Everything would look normal, but when I played reggae music through the amplifier, it would over heat. The plates of the KT88 would run red, especially when I played a mix from the great King Tubby'sthat had subsonic drum and bass frequencies as well as razor sharp high frequencies I would have to re -bais the KT88 and make other changes in order to accommodate reggae's wide frequency response and high slew rate needs. I noticed when I played other types of music the amplifier would respond normal. I found that to be strange so I used King Tubby's mixes as a platform to ensure that the amplifiers would not break down under extreme conditions. I was fascinated by his exclusive style of mixing and unique sound effects. It was the "Roots of Dub" dub album produced by Bunny Lee that became my favorite test album and also inspired me to want to meet him. One day, I was repairing a television for a friend who had worked for King Tubby's. We needed a transformer and King Tubby's was the only place who had those particular types of transformers I was so excited to meet this brilliant man and considered myself very lucky to have had this opportunity After that, it became a regular place for me to buy special made power and output transformers for the amplifiers that I was building King Tubby's became impressed with my electronic skills and abilities at such a young age. I told him I wanted to build a mixing console, a real joke to him. We joked about making mixing consoles with moving faders and automation. Years later It became a realty in Neve's moving faders and SSL's automation with total recall.



How does Reggae music help the electronic industry?

Back in the late seventies a lot of radio stations' record-mastering plants were scared to play reggae on their equipment because transmitter would over modulate and the record cutting machine would go into protection mode to prevent the high frequencies from burning up the cutting heads. Spider man at Dynamics Studio in Jamaica would have to use extra helium to keep the cutting heads cool. Reggae is like the Indy 500 racing driver to audio equipment whenever an audio system can handle reggae's wide frequency response and high slew rate you know you have a good system. Reggae music pushes audio equipment to the extreme. Back in England and Europe Where reggae is more popular, companies like Tanoy, SSL, Neve, Goodman, Studar and all the major brands dominate our recording industry in the US. They have bin using reggae to final test audio equipment long before us in the USA. A few company in the USA like AST audio in New York uses reggae to show off Crown's superior performance Crown is one of the best amplifier in the world made in USA when ever I use a Crown amplifier I don't have to worry about overheating or the amplifier clipping they can handle a lot of abuse.



Valerie Crawford

Overton Brown was only 16 years old when producer/performer Errol "Don" Mais discovered and used the considerable talents of this adolescent dub whiz. Born in Kingston in 1960, the Scientist learned basic electronics from his TV repairman father, skills that made him very popular with the mobile DJs and their not-always-functioning sound systems. A friend suggested he visit the legendary dub producer/mixer King Tubby, not to remix records, but to get some transformers by which Scientist could build his own amplifiers. Soon the Scientist was an employee of Tubby's, fixing transformers and televisions, when one day, after an animated conversation about mixing records, Tubby challenged the Scientist to take a shot at remixing a record. Brimming with adolescent bravado, Scientist took Tubby's challenge, and that led to an extended apprenticeship in dub experimentation under Tubby's guidance. It was while at Tubby's that the Scientist developed his idiosyncratic dub style, playful and very psychedelic, loaded with echo explosions and blasts of feedback, a sound that caught the attention of Don Mais, who overheard the Scientist at the mixing board during a visit to Tubby's studio. With Mais supervising the production, Scientist, now all of 18, cut some wicked dub sides for the Roots Tradition label. At the end of the '70s, Scientist (now also referred to as "The Dub Chemist") left Tubby's to become the main engineer at Channel One Studios, and working with Henry "Junjo" Lawes, cut some best-selling dub LPs, only to leave for the greener pastures of Tuff Gong in 1982. In 1985, Scientist moved to Silver Springs, Maryland, where he lives and works as a recording engineer. ~ John Dougan, All Music Guide