Dub Fx is one of those music acts that catches you from the beginning. Never heard about him until a few weeks ago but now I found it amazing and addictive. A friend suggested it while listening to Massive Attack live in Bucharest but I didn’t pay to much attention then. It took only a YouTube link to get excited about it and prepared to go hear it live in Bucharest.
Basically, the singing style is not new but he’s approach is. I’ve encountered something similar while I was in Barcelona at a music workshop with Freddy LaFont. Freddy is more on the latin-american music side while Dub Fx plays with drum’n’base, reggae and so on… What’s amazing about these guys (and other just like them) is that they are using only their voices to orchestrate their music. They have no use of instruments, just their voices. The only instrument used is a loop machine. Let’s watch Freddy with a short presentation clip.

So, at first view is quite easy. You press the record button on the loop machine (which is based at your feet to be accessed more easily) and you start singing in the microphone every instrument part of your song. When you stop recording the measure, the machine loops it.
But Dub Fx took this to a whole other level. This guy plays with a lot of voice effects and amplifies almost everything. Leaving aside the fact that he is a great beat boxer, he also uses his voice as a bass instrument, adds some synths, pads, plays with reverb and out comes one of the best music acts I’ve ever heard. To better understand, just watch the whole thing in this video. Remember, it’s all done live. Every time you have to take it from the beginning and that can be great as well because you’ll get new ideas every time and your music is sure to be unique every time.

I was looking forward to hear him live because these type of acts are interesting to watch. They practically make you smile while you hear music being created in that moment in front of your eyes. Although it was the hottest day in Bucharest and I had a Defcon 5 head ache I’ve managed to stay up to the performance.
Well, I’m quite pretentious when it comes to live music. As a musician you have to make sure your music sounds great in all conditions. I mean, while you compose you have to take in consideration the fact that your music might be listened from a laptop or a professional sound system, on tv or in a club to the greatest challenge that is outdoor or even a stadium. So you really got to be sure that your music can be listened and understood in all this conditions. If you have to much base in your songs you’ll enjoy it in your headspeakers or your car, but on a stadium you’ll just create a chaos and a disturbing noises.
Unfortunately, Dub Fx‘s music requires a very good sound system and good sound engineers in order to get a great performance in the outdoor. Something that didn’t quite happened in Bucharest. I mean, the guy repeatedly requested for more gain in the microphone but in the end that just made the base sounds to be heard quite disturbed. Was not his fault of course and I’m sure everybody understood that, especially when the power went down a couple of times.
But people had a great time there and I almost forgot about my head ache and got up to dance on “Love Someone”.
This is really something that you have to see and hear for yourself. It’s a great performance act and from my point of view is way above other bands that spend months and months in a studio to get that perfect sound. But in the end is not all about the perfect sound but also about the feeling that you get while listening to music. And this guy surely delivers!
He’ll be back in Romania on the 29th of August in Targu Mures at Peninsula Festival so you still have a chance to catch him near. Next stop for him will be Mother Russia, so…