UK Dub Files: Vibronics

Hello Steve, welcome and thanks for being with us. First of all, where it all started for you: I heard it was about some kind of production of yours on a cassette tape which was picked up by Aba Shanti, and he played it on dubplate, right?
Steve Vibronics: Yeah, it all started years and years ago in just the most basic kind of studio you can imagine, just really rubbish second hand equipment. Nothing to master the tracks on to, just recording really basic tracks, recording them on to tape, and then I gave them to a few people. One of those people I gave them to was Aba Shanti. And then the next thing I'd heard a week later: he loved it, he cutted it on dubplate and he was playing it on big dances in London. I went down to check it out, too see what was going on, and there he was playing my tune. It was just an amazing experience to hear for the first time the music you made in a little studio played on a big soundsystem, hundreds of people, big dance in London… It was like amazing! I still remember it now.

It must have been a confirmation for you to go through with it.
Just to hear your music alongside other people's music really makes you think "Ok, maybe I can be accepted as a reggae producer and maybe it can work for me for sure." When you are listening to it at home, or playing it for your friends or crew, most people say "Yeah, sounds great!", because most people are just interested in the fact you do music, but when you can really think "OK, maybe it ìs going somewhere"…

Your music got really introduced a little later by Zion Train. Can we speak about a similar vibe with you and Neil Perch, production wise?
There's definitely a link, and I learned a lot from Zion Train, but you know, the same way I learned a lot from Aba, having my music played on the Aba Shanti sound system in the beginning. I learned a lot from Neil and from the whole Zion Train crew when they were collected working together, because I didn't know anything about how a studio worked really or how the music industry worked, distribution and releasing, and so on.. They've always looked after themselves, rather than working with agencies or with other companies, and they've kind a showed me how it all worked. I stilllearn from them now. They're still working really hard, and we still talk regularly about projects and stuff.

Can we say the success of Vibronics is partly due to the wonderful voice of Boney L?
She's got an amazing voice, indeed. Definitely one of the best singers I've worked with. At the time she was just my friend in Leicester and it was like "Yeah, she can sing!" She was been singing in reggae bands and it was like "Yeah, let's do some recordings!" and it sounded great! Only years later though I really realized what an impact it had on other people, because when it was released there were just a few singles. Few ones said that she sounded great, wikkid tracks, but then people were saying that about other tracks as well, but years later it was like they've really kind of last it, and that's definitely part of the success of how it all took off. People were like "Wow, you got this great female singer!" Female singers are really popular in reggae, especially British roots reggae. There's a whole huge history of them like Aisha and Rasheeda, you know, and Boney L kind of continued that tradition really.

Is she still working and performing with Vibronics?
A little bit, now and again. She is busy, she is more into like folk music and stuff like that. She still writes music and she is still really busy with music, but she is not so into the kind of roots scene, and she is not very found to perform live, but in the studio… We might play some new dubplate stuff tonight, that she did for us last year, so..