Premiere • 
Upsetters 14 Dub Black Board Jungle, one of the most important dub albums in music history – considered to be the very first of its kind – is being re-released on 20 November 2026 via Week-End Records. In all its contradictions. On vinyl only. Limited to 3,000 copies. Remastered by Stephan Mathieu. An eight-page booklet featuring liner notes by Lee Perry biographer David Katz and an interview with legendary producer Adrian Sherwood.
Tubby, Perry and the myth
There is already disagreement over the date of the original release, which was limited to just 300 copies: some say it was late 1972 in Jamaica, whilst others quite clearly claim it was 1973. The question of authorship also remains unanswered. This is not irrelevant in the context of dub, that mixing technique focused on reverb and bass, which for the first time presents the producer as an artist and his studio as an instrument. Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and King Tubby took existing music for the 14 tracks here and radically reworked it in the studio between 1970 and 1972.
Tubby had been responsible for the mixing, whilst Perry added the ‘hypnotic psychedelic sound effects’. A division of labour. »[A]n unbeatable and tenuous partnership that’s never been bettered,«, as David Katz writes. Perry sometimes saw things differently: »He was the engineer, but he didn’t have anything to do with the effects. It was I [who] did all the effects as well«. In 1981, a new version of the album was released, Blackboard Jungle Dub, this time with 12 tracks and in a different order, often confused with the original. Confusion reigns. Only one thing is certain: »It’s just revolutionary«. (Adrian Sherwood)
