Mad_ProfessorHe was slated to play the very first ever fuji Rock Festival in 1997, but the way the cards fell, and as most of us all know, the typhoon that immortalised the Chilli Peppers as the first Fuji Rock Legends in the festival’s inaugural year meant the entire second day was cancelled, and the his performance along with it. Ironically that day turned out to be perfect weatherwise. He returned in 1999 to play the then named Virgin Tent, now known to all as the Red Marquee. This year marks the first time in over a decade that we will be treated to the analog dub style that is the Mad Professor.

When you talk about Mad Professor, there is one band that inevitably pops up, that being (as if you didn’t know) Massive Attack, also playing FRF 10. It was his 1995 reworking of Massive Attack’s Protection into No Protection that introduced most of the indy rock and electronic scene to Mad Professor, a project that started out as “a few remix singles” and grew into him reworkinging the entire album into dub, he told Rock The Dub earlier this year. This has progressed to his name being mentioned in the liner notes of more albums than I care to think. Particular favourites of mine are his reworkings of Salmonella Dub, notably their breakthrough track For The Love Of It, which made them an overnight success, something it only took them ten years to do.

Though No Protection was the project that put his name on the lips of the mainstream music world, he had been well known in the world of dub for nearly two decades prior, working notably with King Tubby, producing no fewer than ten collaboration albums with Fuji Rock favourite Lee “Scratch” Perry, and numerous projects with other founders of the dub scene. His Dub Me Crazy series put him on the map and earned him plenty of airplay in the UK from the early 80s. Building on this, he has collaborated with just about any name you care to drop within the genre.

Known for his disdain of digital formats, expect something special onstage from the Professor. Look for more analog equipment, and less computers. Speaking with straight.com in April he notes: “I just tear the tracks apart and put them back together in new ways. For the audience, it’s like coming into my studio to get a glimpse of what’s going on.”

I wonder if we in Japan might be treated to a Happy Ending?