King Tubby

Echo tumbling into the distance, snare drums cracking like gunshots, vocals vanishing mid-line and bass that shakes the walls: much of dub's vocabulary was invented by an electronics repairman in Kingston, Jamaica.

King Tubby built sound systems and custom gear, then turned his small studio in the Waterhouse district into a laboratory, using the mixing desk as an instrument. Producers such as Bunny Lee, Lee 'Scratch' Perry and Yabby You brought him their rhythm tracks, and he stripped them back and rebuilt them as eerie, cavernous versions.

Augustus Pablo's King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown, with Tubby at the controls, is a landmark of the form. His apprentices Prince Jammy and Scientist carried his methods into the 80s, and Tubby had already moved into digital production when he was shot dead outside his home in 1989.