Scientist

Scientist, born Overton Brown in Kingston, Jamaica, 1960 (and also known as Hopeton Brown), was a protégé of King Tubby (Osbourne Ruddock), one of the originators of dub music. He left King Tubby’s studio at the end of the 1970s and became the principal engineer for Channel One Studio when hired by the Hoo Kim brothers.

He came to prominence in the early 1980s and produced many albums, his mixes featuring on many releases in the first part of the decade. In particular, he was the favourite engineer of Henry "Junjo" Lawes, for whom he mixed several albums released on Greensleeves Records. He also did a lot of work for Linval Thompson and Jah Thomas. In 1982 he left for Tuff Gong to assist Errol Brown. He then emigrated to the Washington, D.C. area in 1985, again to work in studios as a sound engineer.

Many fans came to know his music due to half of his album 'Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires' being used on the soundtrack for the popular videogame Grand Theft Auto III. The tracks on the fictitious radio station 'K-Jah' are composed entirely of songs from this album. However, Scientist received no royalties for this and sued Rockstar Games unsuccessfully in a US court. The court ruled that according to precedent a recording mixer was not considered the author of a musical work, and so Rockstar were correct to treat the producer Henry "Junjo" Lawes as the copyright holder of the album.

This ruling could be argued to neglect the fundamental difference between dub-reggae and other kinds of music - after all, the album is marketed as 'Scientist rids the world of the evil curse of the vampires': so the publishers and self identified licensors are prepared to attribute authorship to Hopeton Brown when it suits them, but not when it comes to paying him royalties. It can, however, be argued that Scientist was introduced to a much larger audience as a result of the licensing of his album to Rockstar, in which case he may have sold more albums as a result.

Scientist also tours from time to time as a band engineer and producer for the reggae acts that he is currently promoting. His wildly creative artistic style has resulted in the destruction of loudspeakers in the venues where he was controlling the sound balance. As a result, Scientist has been banned from touching the sound equipment in several San Francisco and New York City clubs and studios. ~wikipedia

Black Ark

"The Black Ark
The Black Ark was the recording studio of legendary reggae and dub producer Lee "Scratch" Perry, located in the yard of his family's home in the Washington Gardens neighborhood of Kingston, Jamaica. Although the studio itself was somewhat rudimentary in its set-up and particularly basic with regard to some of the dated equipment employed by Perry, it was nonetheless the breeding ground for some of Jamaica's (and arguably the world's) most innovative sounds and recording techniques in the latter half of the 1970s.

Innovative musical techniques
An example of Lee Perry's inventive style was his ability to overdub layers of sound effects and instrumentation on each recording track of a basic 4-track machine, with such precise timing and in such a way that the resulting sound would destroy the competition from Jamaica's other top producers using the latest 16-track mixing consoles. Perry once buried microphones at the base of a palm tree and thumped it rhythmically to produce a mystifying bass drum effect; his drum booth at the Black Ark was for a time surrounded with chicken wire to further his distinctive sound; many of his songs are layered with a variety of subtle effects created from broken glass, ghastly sighs and screeches, crying babies, and a mooing cow children's toy. These and other notable recording techniques helped define the Black Ark sound, as well as Lee Perry's creative legacy.

Musicians and the Black Ark
In addition to providing pioneering sounds for such reggae stars as Bob Marley and The Wailers, Junior Byles, and Max Romeo, Lee Perry and his studio were formative in creating the highly innovative reggae sub-genre called Dub, in which the producer/engineer becomes the focus of the music, manipulating a pre-recorded track and creating something entirely new using his or her mixing console as nothing less than an instrument.

The end
In 1979, following years of increasingly bizarre and erratic behavior, Lee "Scratch" Perry allegedly set fire to The Black Ark studio, effectively ending an era during which much of Jamaica's most delightfully creative sounds had captured the world of music. However, it has been related by several Perry family members that the studio in fact caught fire in 1983 after an ill-fated attempt to rebuild it, the result of an electrical accident. More often than not, Perry has claimed that he personally destroyed the Black Ark due to "unclean spirits" - an allusion to some of the undesirable people who were constantly at the Black Ark in later years." -Wikipedia

UK Reggae Sound System doc 1978

Sound System education inna 1978 style