1983 brought two more volumes, The African Connection (often acclaimed as one of his best) and the fairly popular Escape to the Asylum of Dub. 1, and quickly followed it with a second volume, the successful Beyond the Realms of Dub. In 1982 he recorded his first album, Dub Me Crazy, Pt. Amid complaints from his neighbors, he moved the studio to a proper facility in Peckham, South London. Calling it Ariwa, after a Nigerian word for sound or communication, he began recording bands and vocalists for his own label of the same name, mostly in the lovers rock vein: Deborahe Glasgow, Aquizim, Sergeant Pepper, Tony Benjamin, Davina Stone, and Ranking Ann, among others. In 1979, he built his own mixing board and opened a four-track studio in his living room in the south London area of Thornton Heath. At age 13, his family moved to London, and around age 20, he started collecting recording equipment: reel-to-reel tape decks, echo and reverb effects, and the like. He earned his nickname as a preteen, thanks to his intense interest in electronics he even built his own radio. Mad Professor was born Neal Fraser (or Neil Fraser) circa 1955 in Guyana, a small country in the northern part of South America. As his reputation grew, he became a remixer of choice for adventurous rock and techno acts, most notably revamping Massive Attack’s entire second album under the new title No Protection. Additionally, he ran his own studio and label, Ariwa, which was home to a stable of vocalists (with an emphasis on lovers rock and conscious roots reggae) and some of the finest British reggae productions of the era. In the mid-’90s, he returned to the basics, debuting a more retro-sounding style on the Black Liberation Dub series. His space-age tracks not only made use of new digital technology, but often expanded dub’s sonic blueprint, adding more elements and layers of sound than his forebears typically did. His Dub Me Crazy albums helped dub make the transition into the digital age, when electronic productions started to take over mainstream reggae in the ’80s. A disciple of Lee “Scratch” Perry, Mad Professor was one of the leading producers in dub reggae’s second generation.
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