Salmonella Dub

Salmonella Dub began in 1992 crafting their name from the “bad-taste” dub cover versions of songs they used to break the ice amongst their original tracks in their early sets. In ’90s New Zealand, dub/roots/reggae freak-outs weren’t entirely in vogue — grunge and dance music held sway — so Salmonella Dub would use lighthearted covers of Nancy Sinatra, The Orb’s Little fluffy Clouds, plus Public Enemy and Fred Dagg’s “Larry Loves Barry” to win over skeptical audiences. In the early ’90s, New Zealand’s liquor licensing laws changed, allowing pubs and clubs to stay open late and revitalizing the country’s live music scene. Members of the band then called Golf Course Alligators seized this opportunity and, in late 1992, Andrew Penman (guitar), Mark Tyler (bass), and Dave Deakins (drums) became Salmonella Dub. In the early days they lacked money for a sampler and used DIY solutions by hooking up an on/off foot pedal to the motor of a cassette player in order to drop samples by foot in real time from tape on stage. These samples would come from whatever was on the TV at the time, whether it was the news or a Cheech & Chong movie. Lacking the funds for cassettes, they raided the bins of a record store and found discarded copies of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles albums that served as their early tape stock. To prepare for their first, self-titled album in 1994, Peter Wood (trumpet, keyboard) and Conan Wilcox (saxophone, percussion) were invited to join the band. Salmonella Dub was released through the independent label Curious Records. Following quickly from this album the band released Dub Tomfoolery a 7 track EP with mixing contributions from Mike Hodgson of Pitchblack. Soon afterwards, Wood left the band, moving to Auckland and getting a job to pay his student overdraft. Around this time Penman made contact with David Harrow (ONU sound) through Grant Fell of the Headless Chickens. Harrow was employed to work on their next EP THC Winter the band’s first foray into Jungle and DnB in 1995. In 1996 the band commenced working on their second album Calming of the Drunken Monkey. It was around this time that their engineer David Wernham left to work with Head Like a Hole and Shihad and Tiki Taane was invited to join the band as live engineer. 1997 they released Calming the Drunken Monkey, signing with Virgin for distribution and beginning overseas tours to Australia, then France, the UK and wider Europe. In 1999 the band released “For the Love of It.” the first single featuring Tiki Taane and produced by David Harrow and Paddy Free that found a surprising degree of mainstream success and won them their first place in the Top Ten of the local charts. The album Killervision followed it and was also popular, achieving double platinum sales and being released in five countries. Back home they received 9 BNet music awards. Suddenly they were local heroes, but based on a studio album with which they personally disliked having to play on the intensive touring that followed it. For their 2001 album Inside the Dub Plates, they brought back David Wernham to engineer rhythm section recordings, and worked extensively with Paddy Free on the arranging and production in a home studio at Mark Tyler’s warehouse. The album was incredibly successful going triple platinum in sales earning 4 RIANZ music awards. A remix album called Outside the Dubplates followed, including remixes from Adrian Sherwood, Dreadzone, Zion Train and Dj Digital. Facing an unexpectedly hefty tax bill in 2003, the band returned to the studio to quickly record their fifth album, One Drop East, to pay it off. Wood was brought back as a session musician and the album went multi platinum. In 2004 Mercy was released as a remix and out-takes album that consisted of songs from the One Drop East recording sessions, mixed at a more leisurely pace. After extensive overseas touring, including a mammoth round of Dub Conspiracy shows with young up and comings Fat Freddy’s Drop, Shapeshifter