Scientist Isn't Done Tinkering With Music

Many musicians don't live up to their stage names. Madonna has never seemed particularly holy, and Future isn't very futuristic. But engaging with the DJ, engineer, and producer born Hopeton Overton Brown (AKA Scientist) makes you feel like you're in the presence of a scientist. As a teenager interested in engineering in 1970s Jamaica, Scientist got a job at the recording studio belonging to legendary engineer King Tubby.

"I watched him mix a few times, maybe five times, and it became second nature," he tells New Times from his home in California.

Working with reggae and dub legends like Bunny Lee, a young Scientist developed all kinds of new recording processes.

"I was talking about making a moving fader," Scientist explains. "I thought we could use the old-time radios in Jamaica that had dials and use that method to have a moving fader. They thought I was a madman, smoking too much weed. Thirty years later, there are moving faders everywhere, just like I predicted."

That work ethic he developed at King Tubby's studio has stayed with him. His Spotify page contains dozens of releases. With so much music, it's tough to know where to start — and don't expect Scientist to guide you.

"I would do five songs in a day, so you don't ever get a personal attachment to any song. It was jobs [and] assignments," he says. "Asking me my favorite song is like asking a cop if he has a favorite criminal."

Perhaps 2021's Sublime Meets Scientist & Mad Professor Inna L.B.C is a good place to start. On the album, he uses studio wizardry to make songs like "Santeria," "Hong Kong Phooey," and "Garden Grove" sound new again.

"I had a friend who worked at the record company who suggested it," Scientist says of the release. "The first rule [of a remix] is to bring out the part of the song that leaves a memory in people's heads. Since Sublime is a legendary California band, I go inside it carefully. I don't alter it in a way it can't be recognized; then I add some flavor."

He'll bring a little flavor to his set during the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Miami's First Fridays event on April 7, which coincides with the museum's newest exhibit, "Denzil Forrester: We Culture."

Scientist admits he wasn't familiar with Denzil Forrester's work before being asked to play, so he'll approach the gig the way he does most DJ sets. "I learn to adapt," he says. "You have a show in mind, but you have to go with the flow where the circumstances are not what was planned. I see reactions: Are people dancing? Do they not like the type of music I'm playing? I do multitrack mixing like I do in the studio with a live emcee. We play a minimum of 45 minutes. If I'm not wearing out the welcome, I carry it as long as I can."

For Scientist, his formative years in Jamaica in the 1960s and '70s are some of his fondest.

"The music scene back then was more about roots, culture, unity, and togetherness," he says. Still, he hasn't returned to the island since 1985. "I was around the good, the bad, and the ugly, and I had to get away. People surround you. 'You're going to be my friend, my daddy, my bank whether you like it or not.' The same thing happened to Bob Marley."

In case you're wondering, Scientist never met the reggae icon.

"I never got to meet him, but I did mix his songs," he adds.

He then ends the interview with a high-stakes story of how he was called upon after Marley's death to save a fragile recording made by the original Wailers, including Marley.

"Bunny Wailer came to me with this album, Music Lesson, on a two-track tape that was very weak and brittle. They didn't know how they could do anything with it. I used editing tape and carefully pasted it on the magnetic tape to give it strength. I said, 'Let's put the two-track tape on a 16-track head.' They looked at me like I was a madman again, but it was the only way we could run it up to a more stable four-track tape. We only had one shot. We couldn't stop the tape, or it would break. It ran, and they could do an overdub on it."

Sounds stressful. "I'm a stress magnet," he says, laughing.

Scientist. 6 p.m. Friday, April 7, at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, 61 NE 41st St., Miami; 305-901-5272; icamiami.org. Admission is free with RSVP.