# Augustus Pablo — King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown Augustus Pablo’s King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown (1976) appears on 5 of our lists — Dub, 1976, Roots, The Waxonia Desk — Ghosts, and The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred, highest at No. 1 in Dub. Every verdict, in full. - **Released:** 1976 - **Label:** Yard Music - **On:** Dub, 1976, Roots, The Waxonia Desk — Ghosts, and The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred - **Updated:** 2026-08-29 - **Artist:** [Augustus Pablo](https://waxonia.com/artist/augustus-pablo/) - **Canonical page:** https://waxonia.com/track/augustus-pablo--king-tubby-meets-rockers-uptown/ ## What 5 lists say ### No. 1 in [Dub](https://waxonia.com/genre/dub/) The record everyone means by dub. Pablo's melodica floats over a Jacob Miller rhythm that King Tubby keeps dismantling and rebuilding, and the space between the parts carries more weight than the parts do. ### Picked by [1976](https://waxonia.com/theme/nineteen-seventy-six/) The most-cited dub record ever made, and it is a melodica line and a mixing desk. Kingston in 1976 was inventing the studio-as-instrument while London was still arguing about guitars. ### Picked by [Roots](https://waxonia.com/theme/the-desk-roots/) The mixing desk becomes an instrument. Every record on this site built from the bass upward, with the vocal free to vanish for a bar, is working from the grammar King Tubby set here. ### Picked by [The Waxonia Desk — Ghosts](https://waxonia.com/selection/the-desk-ghosts/) The starting point for the argument every record below repeats: a mix is a composition. The debt the others owe is as much to the economics that made a B-side worth rebuilding as to the technique itself. ### Picked by [The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred](https://waxonia.com/selection/the-desk-the-hundred/) The record that proves an engineer is a composer. Everything on this list built from the bass upward is quoting it, usually without knowing. ## Analysis 3 sections, no single moment the energy jumps to. - **Tempo:** 64.6 BPM — the pulse reads at half this too — counted the way the genre counts it - **Key:** C minor - **Dynamic range:** 4.6 dB — compressed hard — very little between the quiet and the loud - **Length:** 2:33 - `0:00` A · **peak**, instrumental — sits at the top of this record's range — playing: drums, bass - `0:14` B · **steady** (bar 7), instrumental — holding a level — the groove, neither rising nor falling — playing: drums, bass - `2:10` C · **outro** (bar 70), instrumental — the closing fall — playing: drums, bass **What is playing.** Separated into parts by a source-separation model, so each lane is the instrument it names. - **drums:** the drum kit, separated from the mix - **bass:** the bass part, separated from the mix - **vocals:** the voice, separated from the mix - **other:** everything else — synths, guitars, keys, strings Measured from the YouTube master on 2026-08-29. Section labels describe how the energy moves, not musical form. Anything we were not confident enough to state is omitted rather than hedged. ## Listen [Search Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/search/Augustus%20Pablo%20King%20Tubby%20Meets%20Rockers%20Uptown) · [YouTube Music](https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=oxAl3Jijs20) --- Hand-curated by Waxonia. We host no audio; all links point to streaming platforms.