DON LETTS CURATES A BASS-HEAVY ODYSSEY FOR ECHO BEACH’S 30TH ANNIVERSARY
German record label Echo Beach celebrates three decades in style with The Rebel Dread @ Echo Beach, a vivid compilation curated by Don Letts, the legendary filmmaker, DJ, and cultural connector. Known for his boundary-pushing sets and his BBC6 radio show, Letts dives deep into the label’s archive to pull out a sharp, resonant collection that hums with history and forward momentum.
From the opening track, Dubinator, the compilation sets its tone: heavy bass, restless echoes and a fearless embrace of collision. Letts calls Echo Beach “a frequency, a dubwise state of mind,” and the album reflects that vision. Dubmones and Lee “Scratch” Perry ride alongside Paolo Baldini, Earl 16 and a constellation of other voices, each reshaping sound in their own language.
DUB IS THE TOOL DISMANTLING AND REBUILDING SOUND, SYSTEMS AND SILENCE
The project is a map of connections. Letts threads in echoes of Bowie, Kraftwerk, Booker T and Kate Bush, weaving post-punk and electronica into dub’s ever-expanding orbit. Echo Beach has always thrived on cross-pollination, and here it blossoms. You hear sirens, static, fragments of protest, and the throb of resistance.
Dub, for Letts, is a tool built to dismantle and rebuild. That energy defines the record. It is music to think with, to move with, to challenge silence with. From Kingston to Hamburg, London to Vienna, the compilation feels like a dispatch from a global dub diaspora.
Press play and step inside. These tracks are playful and timeless messages in a bottle.
ABOUT DON LETTS
Don Letts has shaped sound culture through acclaimed compilations like Dread Meets the Punk Rockers Uptown and Time Warp Dub Clash. His projects act as essays in music, tracing links between roots reggae, punk abrasion and early hip-hop.
Beyond the studio, his Grammy-winning documentaries and The Punk Rock Movie cement his role as a cultural archivist, mapping the interplay of Black British identity and sonic experimentation.
