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"If you worked with Augustus Pablo, or people like that, they really smoked,” says Fraser. “When I worked
with them we smoked, you’d light up in the studio and it would be a cloudy affair for days.”
Under these conditions it's amazing Fraser has had such a prolific career. Opening
his Ariwa studio and label in 1979 he’s had a hand in over 200 dub and reggae based releases, including the popular
Dub Me Crazy series. At least that’s his estimate.
“You know what I haven’t counted,”
he says. “I’ve done a load of stuff on my own and a load of stuff in combination with different people. We’ve
got a sequence in the label where we give things the next number. So far we’ve got 210 albums on the label, but it’s
not all Mad Professor. A lot of the time though, cause we’re running on a budget, I have to do the mixing and recording
and all them things.”
Even when pressed Fraser is nonchalant about the
sheer volume of musical material bearing his name in some way.
“When you think about it, it’s over
27 years. If you did it in two years then yes but you can find the time in 27 years. It’s not 200 albums with me as
the artists, it’s me as the engineer, me as producer, me just being in the same room.”
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Fraser’s skill in the studio has often been called
upon outside the dub world. Modern soul act Jamiroquai, hip hoppers the Beastie Boys, punk rockers Rancid and ambient act
the Orb have all received a Mad Professor dub remix. In 1995 he reworked Massive Attack’s second album, Protection.
The result, No Protection, outsold the original. It’s no surprise then that when asked to perform live Fraser chose
to take his studio on stage.
“I basically set up a studio on stage and
mix live,” he says. “It’s an extension of what I was doing in the studio, people were quite interested.
Funnily enough it’s the same agent who I’ve been working with in Australia, he’s the guy who inspired
the show. He was in London and asked me to come and play records at a club he was running in Brixton. I was like, ‘I’m
no DJ I don’t play records’. He said, ‘Yeah but you could do something’. I said, ‘Well I’ll
tell you what I’ll do is come to your club, hook up my mixing desk and do a show’. That’s how it started.”
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A self-taught electronics expert Fraser was able
to move his studio to the stage with relative ease. Initially building his own equipment and studio he credits the electronics
background with providing the basis for his entire musical career.
“If I didn’t have that electronics background
there was no way I could made the stuff I ended up doing,” says Fraser. “I needed that whole structural instinct
to make it work. I taught myself. The first thing I did was build a crystal radio when I was like 10 years old. It took a
bit of time and didn’t work very well. It was so low actually my mum and sister couldn’t hear it. After a couple
of days though it was so loud they were asking me to turn it down.”
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