“Fast Forward Into Dub” by Mad Professor, Neil Fraser
In this track from 1985, Mad Professor uses heavy modulation through techniques such as: Echo, Reverb and Delay in order to express his vision for the future of dub. The track is dowsed in reverb and delay, it begins immediately with a vocal sample, then the drums come in and you can hear someone talking, most likely Mad Professor, then a simple arpeggio on the piano is introduced.
All these first parts of the track, like most of the track, are paired with delay, reverb, echo, or a mix of these, the delay is likely coming from a Roland SDE 3000 DDL, which was one of Mad Professor’s favourite units (shown in his “Prince Fatty TV” interview on Youtube and due to the fact he had six of them in his Ariwa Sound Studios in Croydon), due to its pitch shifting/speed varying capabilities when it came to the delay clock ,you can hear the use of these features in the vocals throughout most of the song alongside some reverb to give them that signature dub texture.
On the drums, Mad Professor heavily used spring reverb which gives the snare that metallic sound and lets those toms that are panned to the right ring out quite a bit. He also it on a clap/pitched up snare sound which is also panned but to the left.
As with many dub tracks the arrangement of this track is really interesting, for example, he takes layers out like the piano and bass for example, and will replace it by looping the delay for a few seconds before either reintroducing the same layers or adding new ones.
Bibliography:
https://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/diary-of-a-madman/3442