BURNING BABYLON

Burning Babylon is a one man Dub Reggae project from Boston, Massachusetts USA. Created by Slade Anderson, the heavyweight riddims of Burning Babylon's sound are firmly anchored in the 1970's Jamaican roots tradition, but with an ear for the neo dub stylings of the present day.



"I came to dub relatively late in my musical career. For 15 years I played guitar in various punk/metal bands in the Boston area, some of which you might be familiar with (The Freeze, Straw Dogs, X-15). For me, heavyweight music meant snarling guitars and screaming stacks of Marshall amps. It took years to recognize that music with those elements removed could still be heavy and powerful. Not surprisingly, the music I played mirrored what I listened to - loud and fast were the rules of my turntable. What reggae I did hear came via The Clash and, of course, Marley. The word "dub" had yet to enter my vocabulary. Although when I was still a teenager it had begun slowly creeping in around the edges, reggae stayed on the periphery of my listening experience for years to follow."



"In the mid 90s I began playing bass seriously for the first time. During this same period I also decided to investigate reggae more deeply. Since I was now primarily a bass player, focusing on music that was bass-oriented made sense. I knew I wanted music that was more earthy and less slick than Marley or Tosh, but had no idea what to look for. So I searched for albums that looked as though they might offer what I wanted. The first one I bought was "Glen Brown and King Tubby: Termination Dub". The cover art looked as if the music was going to be pretty classic, gritty and authentic and I liked the title as well. Luckily I'd hit on exactly what I was in search of. It didn't take long to readjust the way I listened to music (with little or no vocals) to fully appreciate what I was hearing. Drums drenched in reverb, horns and guitars echoing into oblivion, and the most heavyweight bass I'd ever heard. It wasn't long before dub was stuck in my brain. Soon I was buying every album I could find to immerse myself in the music. Being a musician I wanted to try and create this music that had so captured my attention. After a few weeks of wrestling with the rhythms, I finally got it and recorded my first dub track. Burning Babylon was born."