Dub Trees is the downtempo, dubbed out alter ego of Liquid Sound Design label boss Youth. Not only a boundary pushing and award winning producer, remixer, writer, composer, sometime DJ but also original bass player with seminal apocalyptic post punk band Killing Joke.

Youth’s original inspiration towards alchemical musical fusion came from a mixture of two outlaw musics: punk’s DIY sensibility and dub reggae’s creation of vast sonic space as a refuge for those excluded from mainstream life. Refusing to accept conventional boundaries and able to find emotional connections in a vast range of music of music, Youth has consistently experimented with combinations. In the process, his work has consistently redefined musical possibilities. “All I’ve ever wanted was to express myself in a way that moves people the way I’ve been moved” he says. In Dub Trees, ten years in the making, Youth has created a dub masterpiece of intense, eloquent head music.

Back in ’77, Youth was a teenage punk, hanging out in Ladbroke Grove’s squats and toilet venues, soaking up in the street’s sounds and bass culture he heard everywhere he went. “You’d go up the Roxy, hear Don Lets playing dub. And I used to go and see Shaka, “ he remembers, “dub systems, blueses and shebeens at the Barley High. I went to meet Bob Marley with John Lydon at the Mayfair Hotel. It was Lydon that educated me about the way punk and reggae were rebel vibes”.

Youth, then playing in a punk band called Rage, was discovered by Killing Joke founders Jaz Coleman and Geordie Walker. His first contribution to Killing Joke, at the age of 18, was ‘Turn to Red’ - a dub influenced track in which the spacey undertones gave disturbing depth to the group’s menace. In the three years the original line up managed to stay together, producing increasingly extreme work out of ever more extreme lifestyles, Killing Joke created confrontational music which influenced Nirvana, Marilyn Manson and whole generation of imitators.

After leaving Killing Joke, his next step as musical innovator was hooking up with Jimi Cauty to form the short lived Brilliant. Fusing Youth’s funk driven bass line with a pop sensibility, Brilliant pre-empted much of the decades musical direction. Post Brilliant Youth turned his hand to an increasingly successful career as remixer.

When acid house hit in’88, it re-energised Youth’s creativity all over again. ”I used to make early acid house records under a different name, because people’s idea of me was ex -Killing Joke, ” he describes. “But I got a reputation of making good records. That’s why I started Wau Mr Modo”.

With the label Wau Mr Modo, Youth got together former Killing Joke roadie Alex Paterson to work on The Orb, who fused dub techniques with 70’s progressive rock forms to redefine the possibilities of ambient music. Groundbreaking stuff, the work produced by The Orb between 1989 and 1993 sound tracked a thousand chill outs. Its deep dub and spacey effects were perfect accompaniment to a lazy lazy comedown. Youth set up his idyllic Butterfly Studio
In South London around the same time, and with generous idealism, used it as a site not only for his own production remixing and writing, but for a freeform collective of other musicians to produce work. It was the first time he had a studio entirely at his disposal. After ten years of living in squats, he made Butterfly the focus of an alternative scene where underground culture could flourish organically.

But it was the free scene which inspired him, in particular, the beach parties in Goa, where travelling hedonists gathered to dance to mesmeric tribal techno in a freeform environment which encouraged folk music, drums and the sounds of nature on its fringes, and was a platform for cultural and music diversity.

Dub Trees’ powerful, potent, primal soundscapes, melding darkness and light, are the culmination of ten years’ work, and the repository of Youth’s most heartfelt creative forces. “Dub’s my focus,” he explains, “but within it there’s everything from the Beatles to Apocalypse Now. It’s got my whole life in it.” It’s a life full of stories, Youth has been at the cutting edge of sounds which have created pop culture’s most influential environments since he was a messy kid in a dirty white shirt who hung around with Johnny Rotten, stoned and marvelling at the ghostly spaces and textures of otherworldly dub.

With Dub Trees, he’s used his own alchemy to expand dub into a new generation of sound.