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Library
Science: High Life Honey
The long-awaited Danny Elfman dub-reggae record has finally surfaced after years on the shelf. Actually, that is not true. Elfman never made a dub record but the Library Science debut High Life Honey is just as creepy as most albums Elfman releases. For this reason, I conducted a psychological experiment to report on the effects of records made by Seattle dub aficionados (who thankfully do not have Anglo-dreads) in relation to the records released by their Caribbean counterparts. High Life Honey starts in a standard manner with Angry Lil Stumpy which is the right tempo for my participants to begin crushing their herb to begin the process of rolling their spliffs. The drums and bass are timed precisely while the horns and xylophone chime in at just the right moment, which is what gives the record that Edward Scissorhands vibe. It took about five minutes to get the roll-ups done properly and dried while the aptly titled Fun quietly lingered in the background. The spliffs were about to be lit at the beginning of Dummy Pants, but my participants reckoned that the tune is a little too COPS: KINGSTON, so we had to move right along to What Time is Science. This song is airy enough to allow the room to get cloudy so we could get to work. From this point on, every song speaks to the next, and believe me, this is not the ganja talking. During my clinical study, I refrained from the collie weed, because I had to make sure that my participants did not reach for the King Tubby record featured in the control group. My findings were that while the entire control group finished the test by passing out, while the experimental group got properly irie. The only side effect was that as a whole, the experimental group experienced feelings of government paranoia with some fears of paper bag monsters that were chasing them. This fear seemed to stem during the tracks Science is Bad and Work, which are in terms of dub effects nutrient rich. The experimental group also expressed feelings of pain that are associated with Chinese water torture. This resulted from the water drip sounds sprinkled throughout the record. The fear was so real to them, because the sounds were actually recorded as the water dripped from a leaky faucet in the studio where High Life Honey was recorded. Nevertheless, the experimental group continually laughed and tried to dread their hair throughout the duration of High Life Honey. The laughing was welcomed, but the attempts at dread-making gave me no choice but to administer electric shocks to their wrists. As for a conclusion concerning Library Science as a band, I have found that this outfit respects its classic dub influences but the traditional notion of making dub music does not consume them. The music found on High Life Honey is part of the genre that Library Science calls art geek dub, meaning everything is played live but is then processed through a myriad of music geek equipment. This type of gear includes but is not limited to tape echoes, spring reverbs, and analog phasers. In short, you will not find this record sold in the New Age music sections of Whole Foods, Wild Oats or Fresh Fields. The Library Science process is in direct opposition to the orthodox method of simply re-recording a reggae track as an instrumental later to be released as a b-side accompaniment to a standard reggae song with vocals. Regardless of all the minute details, the final product is worth giving a try. I would tell you to ask members of the experimental group, but they all left happily with copies of High Life Honey in their hands. We can only hope that they got rides in cabs or walked home.
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