The Clash In Dub, Part One

How underground mixer Black Market Dub has reimagined The Clash’s back catalog, through ghosts and tape delay.

The Clash snapped on tour in Sweden in 1980, because I can’t afford to pay anyone for their photos! Left-to-right: Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, and Paul Simonon. (📷 Pic by Helge Øverås - Own work-wikimedia_commons)

Some mysterious mad genius in Los Angeles, going by the name of Black Market Dub, has been releasing crucial underground mixes via Bandcamp since at least 2015. His recording console and Echoplex have reconstructed everyone from The Temptations to Radiohead to Hall & Oates, and even imagined reggae scores for films ranging from Plan 9 From Outer Space to Night of the Living Dead.

His manifesto asks questions no one ever thought to ask: “What would happen if The Beach Boys had The Wailers as their backing band instead of The Wrecking Crew? What if David Bowie spent the summer of 1975 in Kingston, Jamaica with King Tubby instead of Philadelphia? Michael Jackson meets Scratch Perry? These questions are the basic thesis of Black Market. Listen loud, dance, enjoy, and share.”

But probably most important of all the dub plates he’s spun are two EPs from 2016 and 2019, which he described as “a dub trip with the UK's greatest band, yes I said it. GREATEST BAND... Maybe besides those guys from Liverpool.”

He’s talking about The Clash.

Dub, for those just tuning in, is a radical remixing method that evolved in parallel with reggae in Jamaica during the late 1960s and early ’70s. It began when sound engineers like King Tubby and Lee “Scratch” Perry started stripping existing reggae tracks down to their bones—removing vocals, boosting bass, adding tape echo, spring reverb, and sculpting space into the music.

The results weren’t just versions, they were visions. The studio became an instrument, and the mix became the message. What was once a danceable tune became something psychedelic, meditative, sometimes haunting. A song didn’t just play anymore—it echoed. It haunted. It warned.

Dub is the direct ancestor of remix culture. You hear its fingerprints everywhere now: in hip hop’s emphasis on bass and breaks, in EDM’s drops and loops, in any genre where reimagining a track is part of its DNA. Dub was doing all that before samplers and laptops, by hand, on tape, with soul and smoke in the signal chain.

So if you’re wondering why this essay about The Clash keeps talking about echo, space, and ghosts? It’s because we’re talking about dub. And The Clash, more than any other punk band, dragged dub straight into the rebel heart of rock ’n’ roll.

The Clash were already boundary smashers. Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, and Topper Headon never sat still. They invited reggae in early on, with their blitzkrieg bopping of Junior Murvin’s “Police And Thieves” on their first LP. Then they got Lee “Scratch” Perry to produce their hardest early punk assault, “Complete Control.” That Kingston beat continued underpinning their harder-than-hard rebel rock and underwriting Strummer’s ranting poetry.

Whether attaching a rocket-ska engine to “Pressure Drop” or creating their own crucial riddims such as “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais,” The Clash did more than anyone to fold reggae into punk’s consciousness. They made the influence explicit via London Calling and Sandinista!, welcoming champion toaster Mikey Dread into the fold to remix tracks like “Armagiddeon Time” and “Bankrobber” into dub plates.

Before I ever heard Bob Marley, before I knew what a dub plate even was, The Clash were my gateway drug to reggae culture, as they were for most punks. Their records didn’t just flirt with reggae—they laced punk with bass and space. Hiding in those records were these moments, stripped-down, echoed-out. Suddenly I was hearing dub before I knew the word. Before I knew the lineage, I felt it. Dub was ghosts in the grooves, the beat skipping into another dimension. And The Clash—bless their messianic punk hearts—were the ones who turned me on. Turned us all on.

But…did they get dub enough? I mean, they lost an opportunity in that team-up with Scratch The Upsetter. Perry produced “Complete Control,” sure—stood in the room, pushed the faders, waved his magic wand. But… he didn’t dub it. He harnessed the energy, but he didn’t pull it apart and let it breathe in smoke and space.

Perry produced the original “Police And Thieves,” and he liked what The Clash did with it. He understood that they understood. They didn’t steal—they studied. They didn’t borrow—they believed.

The Clash were on fire during the summer of ‘77 that led to “Complete Control.” Perry saw that and captured it clean. But imagine if he’d returned to it…

What if he’d stripped it down to Paul’s bassline? Let Mick’s guitar haunt? Echoed Strummer screaming “This is Joe Public speaking!” like an apparition demanding justice?

What if he made “Complete Dub” chant down Babylon, and not just CBS Records? Still carrying the message, still teaching through space. Through bass. Tuned the track until he had to say, “This is rebel frequency….”

That’d have been the real complete control, eh?

With 2016’s The Clash – Give ‘Em Enough Dub and 2019’s Complete Clash, Black Market Dub attempts to answer those questions for all time. No, he didn’t remix “Complete Control,” although he should. (AHEM! Hello, Mr. Market!) But he understands how The Clash flirted with dub, Sandinista! acting as the warning shot. Mikey Dread opened the door, but they never walked far enough through. And Scratch? Shit, if they’d gotten Lee Perry in a room with them in ’79, we’d still be picking pieces of the multitrack outta orbit!

Black Market gets it, though. Not just the rhythm, but the revenant behind it. He dubs like he’s survived every verse. He knows when to let Joe echo, when to let Mick vanish. And he knows the silence between snares can say more than a thousand lyrics.

This isn’t just dub. This is alternate history. It’s someone asking, “What if the revolution had a reverb chamber?” What if punk didn’t just flirt with reggae but shacked up with it, married it, moved into a Kingston row house, and lived off bass and fire for the rest of its life?

These Black Market joints don’t feel like “remixes.” They feel like seances. Every reverbed-to-fuck snare hit is a footstep back into a moment you thought you knew, and suddenly the whole damn alleyway’s lit differently. Black Market tears off the studio walls, pulls the band back into the basement, and lets the echo say the part no one else had the nerve to.

Black Market Dub even remixes the sleeve art!

The trip begins with “London Calling” on The Clash – Give ‘Em Enough Dub, in a version that no longer shouts. It haunts. The riff stalks, rather than slashes. The urgency’s still there, but now it’s wrapped in smoke and echo, like a warning broadcast from the bottom of the Thames. This is prophecy slowed down to the speed of dread. The flood is still coming, the ice is still melting, but now it’s being whispered, not screamed. “London Calling” in dub is no longer the sound of the empire falling. It’s the echo of it already gone.

Next comes London Calling’s “I’m Not Down,” and it staggers you before you can even register what Black Market has done to the tapes. The instrumentation, as with all the tracks, is almost completely re-done by his crew, with a pair of drummers and percussionists—Horseman and Style Scott—laying down riddims Topper hadn’t imagined. Kyle Bagley’s trombone barks and drawls intermittently, as Black Market himself handles choppy rhythm guitar, bass, organ and piano. The remaining ghosts of the original “I’m Not Down” are now Mick’s lead guitar and vocal, and Joe’s backing wails.

What was once an anthem for crawling out of the gutter with blood in your teeth now drags you through the mud before it lets you stand. The reverb and prodigious delay broadcasts Mick’s defiance as if echoing off alley walls, like he's telling himself he’s not down, but he’s not so sure anymore. This dub turns survival into ritual. The bassline doesn’t strut—it endures. The delay isn’t just an effect. It’s the sound of second-guessing, of breath caught in the chest.

This version doesn’t say “I’m not down” to convince you. It says it to convince the narrator himself. And maybe—just maybe—it’s working. Black Market’s “I’m Not Down” no longer defies…it prays.

Then The Clash’s ultimate rebel rock statement, “Death Or Glory,” gets the Black Market treatment. That galloping, hoarse shout of bitter defiance is now a slow, swaying dirge, like a bar fight turned funeral march. It still snarls, but now it’s doing it through gritted teeth, not clenched fists. The deep space and dropouts rattle like the years caught up with the fight, leaving echoes where the fists used to be.

This is dub as reckoning. The glory’s gone hazy. The death? Still looming. But in this version, they feel closer, more intimate. It doesn’t yell, “Death or glory.” It asks it. And the silence after is the answer. But not before Black Market drops in Joe Strummer snarling at some clueless newsman that The Clash’s music “ain’t poetry or ping pong balls, or making baskets out of wrapping,” the last syllable echoing into white noise.

Then Black Market performs actual sonic alchemy: he retools “Rock The Casbah,” finally making it listenable. I hated that song when it was blowing up the charts! It did not sound like The Clash to me, and I was getting sick of all these assholes in my school coming up to me and asking if I liked this "great new band" I'd only been yelling about for four years, at that point! Suddenly, I was standing at The Clash’s bin at Record Bar next to guys in Van Halen shirts who’d never heard “Janie Jones.” The Clash got their feet in the door, and they were now beloved by light beer and wine cooler drinkers across America, and it felt like the entirety of their new audience were pissing and barfing in the baptismal font.

But this version? This dub? This feels like the actual “Casbah.”

It’s funky without being cute, subversive without being radio-friendly.

It doesn’t wink. It lurks.

It finally sounds like something that wouldn’t get played at a school dance. But it would get played at a sound system, or a blues dance, as they were called down yard.

Topper's drums are stripped out, for Style Scott and Horseman to take it on a road trip to Channel One, to meet King Tubby and those rockers uptown. This version doesn’t rock the Casbah. It dismantles it, brick by reverbed brick. It’s not a party—it’s a spell. The riot still burns, but now it burns slow.

This “Casbah" is molten. The groove still dances, but now it’s stoned, like the commotion’s happening underwater. Topper’s keyboard hook now sounds like the call to prayer got hijacked by a DJ with a tape delay fetish.

What’s left is bones and echo...and the voice of Joe Strummer alone, walking through the rubble. This is no longer a protest song. It’s a ritual uprising. Just… soaked in dub.

Then the entire EP climaxes with “I Fought The Law.” In its original rendering, The Clash took this Bobby Fuller Four oldie, attached a rocket engine they’d found at NASA surplus sale, and then watched the damned thing EXPLODE after sticking the key in the ignition. It was their ultimate rebel rock statement, a “fuck you” on a par with Jimmy Cliff’s “The Harder They Come.” It seemed to say, “I fought the law, and the law won. But that ain’t the point! I stood my ground. I went down with my guns blazing. They kicked in the door, and I fired back, taking as many of those bastards as I could down to Hell with me!”

As veteran newscaster Tom Snyder’s poltergeist says from within one of Black Market’s breakdowns on this version, “The Clash actually seem to stand for something – things like ideas, among other things.”

This version? It shakes. The intro commences as a heavy drop, all sniper-shot rimshots, Joe echoing through delay like he’s testifying from purgatory, as sirens never used on the original punctuate in the distance.

You feel how empty it is now. That drive is gone. Topper’s original beat was furious, the stampede of 1000 horses. This beat’s a marching, a dirge, dragging chains behind it. It’s a funeral rhythm, not for the rebel, but for everything that crushed him.

Snyder’s voice drifting through the breakdown haunts. It’s no longer commentary, but news from the other side, anchoring the dub’s meaning in what The Clash always stood for.

This “I Fought The Law” isn’t a boast anymore. It’s a confession. It’s a spectre’s final statement, echoing out from behind concrete walls. This is no longer the last shouts of a man firing back. This is the final testament of someone already dead, refusing to lie down. Strummer’s voice is now a death rattle. The defiance shifted.

Black Market didn’t just dub “I Fought the Law.” He exhumed it. And what came back isn’t justice.
It’s judgment. And it’s still echoing.

End Part One.

“This here music mash up the nation, this here music cause a sensation….”

Joe Strummer sang those words on The Clash’s rendition of Danny Ray’s “Revolution Rock,” one of the songs Black Market dubbed here. Nearly 45 years later, that same rebel frequency still echoes. Louder. Deeper. Soaked in bass and dread.

If this piece lit something in you—if you felt the memory in the groove, the riot in the reverb, the truth hiding in echo—then share it. Pass it like a mixtape. Like a bootleg handed off under flickering streetlights. This is music journalism as séance. Punk with space and memory in its bones.

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