Overton Brown was only 16 years old when producer/performer
Errol "Don" Mais discovered and used the considerable talents of this adolescent dub whiz. Born in Kingston in 1960,
the Scientist learned basic electronics from his TV repairman father, skills that made him very popular with the mobile DJs and their not-always-functioning sound systems. A friend suggested he visit the legendary dub producer/mixer
King Tubby, not to remix records, but to get some transformers by which
Scientist could build his own amplifiers. Soon
the Scientist was an employee of
Tubby's, fixing transformers and televisions, when one day, after an animated conversation about mixing records,
Tubby challenged
the Scientist to take a shot at remixing a record. Brimming with adolescent bravado,
Scientist took
Tubby's challenge, and that led to an extended apprenticeship in dub experimentation under
Tubby's guidance. It was while at
Tubby's that
the Scientist developed his idiosyncratic dub style, playful and very psychedelic, loaded with echo explosions and blasts of feedback, a sound that caught the attention of
Don Mais, who overheard
the Scientist at the mixing board during a visit to
Tubby's studio. With
Mais supervising the production,
Scientist, now all of 18, cut some wicked dub sides for the Roots Tradition label. At the end of the '70s,
Scientist (now also referred to as "The Dub Chemist") left
Tubby's to become the main engineer at Channel One Studios, and working with
Henry "Junjo" Lawes, cut some best-selling dub LPs, only to leave for the greener pastures of Tuff Gong in 1982. In 1985,
Scientist moved to Silver Springs, Maryland, where he lives and works as a recording engineer.
–
John Dougan, Rovi