Victor Rice
| Victor Rice | |
|---|---|
| Born |
April 17, 1967 Syosett, Nassau, New York |
| Genres | Reggae, Ska, Dub |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, Producer, Mix Engineer, Sound Designer |
| Years active | 1988–present |
| Labels | Moon Ska Records, Stubborn Records |
| Associated acts |
The Scofflaws Stubborn All-Stars Mephiskapheles SKAndalous All Stars Strikkly Vikkly Firebug BR |
| Notable instruments | |
| Double bass, Bass guitar | |
Victor Rice is an influential musician, producer and mix engineer from New York City. Raised in Huntington, New York. He attended the Manhattan School of Music and began his professional career in the late 1980s during ska music’s so-called third wave as both a bassist and producer. In the late 1990s he became a composer and sound designer for television. In 2002, Rice moved to Brazil and although he continued working as a producer, performer and sound designer, he shifted his focus and became renowned as a mix engineer, working with a variety of local groups representing a number of different genres.
Rice began playing ska music in 1988 as a bass player with The Scofflaws, one of the most important ska bands of the third wave era. In the early and mid-1990s, he emerged as a central figure in New York’s ska scene, both as a performer (Scofflaws, Stubborn All-Stars, New York Ska Jazz Ensemble) and a producer, (The Pietasters, The Slackers, The Adjusters, Skavoovie and the Epitones and others) and gained notoriety for having worked with many of the bands on the influential Moon Ska record label. In 1996, Rice began experimenting with dub music, largely at Version City, the recording studio Jeff "King Django" Baker founded on East Third Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side for his label, Stubborn Records. The approach to music at Version City was completely analog and novel, in that recordings were largely collaborative and community oriented. This allowed Rice to explore and develop his dub technique with the large “Version City Rockers” stable of musicians, alongside musician/producers like “Agent” Jay Nugent. Rice’s first solo record, At Version City, was recorded completely at the Version City studio and released in 1999.
In the 2000s, Rice continued to play bass on and produce recordings for artists like Vic Ruggiero, Rocker T and Crazy Baldhead. He also continued to perform with the Victor Rice Octet, a band that performs his own ska and reggae compositions, and as the Strikkly Vikkly Dubsystem, a solo act in which Rice mixes dub live on stage using an analog reel-to-reel tape machine and traditional signal processing effects. Although influenced by important foundational artists such as King Tubby and Augustus Pablo, Rice has a dub style that is distinct from that of the genre’s early pioneers. While he employs many of the delay, echo, and reverb effects the original dub mixers used, he generally works with ska rhythms that are more quickly-paced than the traditional roots reggae rhythms found in Jamaican dub.
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