Sometime back in the 1970s producers found they could rearrange the elements of a song and turn it into something else.

The first time I heard of this involved the album King Tubby Meets the Rockers Uptown, which was produced by Augustus Pablo. He released an album, this was the title tune:

It was based on his production of Justin Miller’s song “Baby I Love You So.”

The Rockers version omits the words and spaces out the sounds. That’s the dub program.

I’m no historian of dub reggae or it’s somewhat recent progenitor, dub step, but the two are related by being producer acts rather than performance tracts.

And then there is Skrilex, uber dub producer, mixing Damian Marley’s performance, which sounds like this: http://youtu.be/PR_u9rvFKzE.

I’m not a fan, too crushing without dynamics for no apparent reason, but I can see why the kids like the harsher sounds. The ones that mystify their elders? Haven’t the kids always?