21 Dub Street: Dub Be Good To Me.

21 Dub Street launch their new CD at the Moonbar on Thursday.

Local Dub Collective 21 Dub St are a pretty diverse bunch of guys. They’ve all got at least one other band they play in (in some cases three or four) and it’s mostly from a punk/rock background. They’ve been together for about two years now and have quickly earnt the respect of dub and reggae fans in Brisbane with their no fuss, total dub approach to live shows and tunes.

Last weekend saw the Dub Street fighting the intense afternoon heat at 4zzz’s Market Day, where about 300 people gathered in the blisteringly hot sun to listen to music that’s soothing for the soul. The vibe was great still in the heat, and almost unbelievably people still danced.

The new CD from Dub St is out next week in all local stores, featuring six tracks recorded early this year at QUT‘s Kelvin Grove studios by local producer Matt Fraser. I had a brief chat with mainman Kris Miles about 21 Dub Street.

“We formed about two years ago, when we finally got off our arses and did something about starting it. We’d been talking about it for years. It consists of Scotty on drums from Badnitz and Community Cervix, Andy from Sausage Chopper and Cervix on guitar, Chris from the Quickening is on Guitar too, while Jordie from Dick Nasty is on the Bass, and I play percussion and also sing, I’ve been in Upsidedown Flag and the Suffragettes. We all really mix it up with instruments, we swap around all the time and play what we want, it all comes out a lot more interesting that way…plus all our mates come along and jam at our gigs.

“Initially we started out pretty heavy and a lot darker, much more reggae, and that’s from out punk/metal band influences, but now it’s really getting chilled out and turning into full dub styles. It’s getting pretty hard to replicate our sound live now, it’s very tricky to do what we’ve done in studio with delay live. We’re starting to include a live mixer as part of our outfit, ol’ skool Johnny or Matt up on the desk giving us that crazy delay soaked sound. I think Johnny is bringing up an old tape delay unit for the Thursday night show, which will be great fun in the Moonbar.”

“We’ll have the new CD up there on the night for sale for $10, and a great local line-up featuring Freaky Lou, NOMC, Basmati and Aniki, all rippin’ out the dub inspired tunes. It’ll hopefully be a really nice laidback atmosphere on the night and well chilled all round.”