Reviewing “Famine in the Land of Dub” by DabbleDob

Released in 2019, this is an underappreciated track by Dabbledob as it has 25 views on SoundCloud. “Famine in the Land of Dub” is one of Dabbledob’s 17 current songs. Check their music on Spotify.

Dabbledob’s sound crosses quite a few genre lines. Through his work, there is a large degree of crossover of musical styling. That is definitely shown through his songs.

“Famine in the Land of Dub” by DabbleDob

The icon for the song depicts a fantasy warrior riding on a mystical toad. That combined with the name, “Famine in the Land of Dub” invokes imagery of a medieval fantasy realm with the music of that genre such as folk, medieval instrumental, indie rock, and so on. It’s not what you’d expect with the name it has. It brings a pleasant surprise when the song starts as it’s completely different from what you’d originally think.

This is a genre-bending song for sure. “Famine in the Land of Dub” certainly brings in its own mesh of Reggae, Ska, Blues and Jazz. The delivery of the song, although confusing at first, is a great chill song.

“Famine in the Land of Dub” is quite a bit more than the sum of its parts with its purely instrumental work, rhythm, and explorative production. During the whole song, there are no vocals. Some of his other songs, such as “Shoot To Kill”, “The Princess is here”, and “Le Bombe Neutron”, have included sound bytes and vocals. This song has only the instrumental. This allows the listener to focus solely on the sounds as they’re introduced and melded with the previous tunes.

The song begins with a rhythmic sound that evolves into a traditional reggae rhythm, which would typically signal an indie reggae song, but when acoustic guitars, sound effects, and a blues trumpet are added, the audience knows this is not your typical song.

Overall the song is dominated by a jazz tone but it’s hard to pin down the genre. It’s reggae with notes of a jazzy trumpet, making for an interesting combination of genres. It eventually soars into smooth jazz toward the end, with science-fiction-like sound bytes that would make Star Trek fans nostalgic.

Famine in the Land of Dub by Dabbledob 7/10