There’s one album Keith Hudson is best known for: Pick a Dub from 1974, an early dub classic that holds its own alongside genre giants like King Tubby and Lee »Scratch« Perry. Hudson’s career, however, followed a more erratic path than that of his peers. He moved from Jamaica to New York in the mid-1970s, set up his own label, Joint, and released records with varying success until his death from lung cancer in 1984.
It was on Joint in 1979 that Nuh Skin Up Dub was released, an album that has remained in the shadow of his acknowledged masterpiece. What’s remarkable is not only that Hudson honoured his studio band, Soul Syndicate, on the cover, but also the consistency with which he approaches dub here. Hudson, who also appeared as a vocalist, creates in this cosmos of echo and reverb a bass-heavy force that takes reduction seriously. There are no gimmicks to compensate for the vocals, fragmented and cut down to mere seconds. He is content with the elements at hand, reassembling them into a sound that feels both vast and tightly compressed at the same time. The tracks are called »Bad Things«, »Troubles« or »Even Those Dreadful Words«, and there is no shortage of worry in the music. But there’s also truth: where there’s delay, there’s a way.
