Jstar live at The Control Tower

Event Details

This event took place at Arcan in Ho Chi Minh City on Saturday, 26 January 2019, running from 9 PM until 2 AM on the final weekend before Tết. Saigon Dub Station and Scientific Sound Asia presented UK producer, remixer and DJ Jstar live for a night connecting Reggae, Dub, Hip Hop, Dancehall, Jungle and bass music.

The event was presented under The Control Tower, a name already familiar to Scientific Sound Asia listeners through Jstar’s regular radio programme. His show concentrated on Reggae, Dub, bass music and sound-system culture, making a live edition at Arcan a natural extension of the music he had been broadcasting from Ho Chi Minh City.

Saigon Dub Station added another important element through its connection with reggae and sound-system culture in Vietnam. Bringing that platform together with Scientific Sound Asia created a night centred on bass pressure rather than a conventional House or Techno club programme.

The original event description promised the UK bass sound moving from Drum and Bass to Hip Hop and Dancehall in a reggae style. That range closely matched Jstar’s own catalogue, which had spent years connecting Jamaican musical influences with British club and soundsystem culture.

Jstar is a London producer, DJ and remixer whose work crosses Reggae, Dub, Hip Hop, Dancehall and Jungle-influenced bass music. Growing up in West London around reggae, rave, funk and Hip Hop gave him a musical background well suited to moving between those styles rather than treating them as separate scenes.

His reputation developed strongly through reggae remixes created specifically for DJs and dancefloors. One of the records that helped establish his name was his reggae treatment of Blackstreet’s No Diggity, which circulated through club and sound-system sets before Jstar expanded his catalogue considerably further.

Rather than remaining within the mash-up format that became popular during the same period, Jstar developed original productions and increasingly ambitious remix work. His catalogue has included reinterpretations connected with artists including Major Lazer, Madness, Mark Ronson, DJ Vadim and other acts from Reggae, Hip Hop and bass music.

By the time of the Saigon event, he had already spent well over a decade developing that approach through records, DJ sets and remixes. His work had attracted recognition from selectors including David Rodigan, Norman Jay and Grandmaster Flash, placing his productions in the hands of DJs with strong connections to Reggae, Funk, Soul and Hip Hop culture.

Jstar’s music was particularly suited to sound-system environments because rhythm and low-frequency weight remained central even when he moved between genres. A Hip Hop vocal could appear against a reggae rhythm, Dancehall could meet heavier electronic bass, and Dub production techniques could feed directly into Jungle or Drum and Bass selections.

That musical relationship made the collaboration with Saigon Dub Station especially appropriate. Sound-system culture has always depended on selectors using music dynamically for a crowd, and Jstar’s work was created with exactly that kind of dancefloor interaction in mind.

Listeners could explore his releases through Jstar’s Bandcamp, where his recorded catalogue provided a direct introduction to his production style. His official Jstar website also documented releases, projects and activity surrounding his work as a producer, DJ and remixer.

Recorded mixes and additional material were available through Jstar on SoundCloud, giving audiences another way to hear the relationship between his own productions and the records appearing in his DJ sets. The original Saigon event announcement specifically encouraged listeners to explore these releases before attending the show.

Jstar had recently released the Warrior EP before this appearance, continuing his focus on contemporary Reggae and Dancehall production. The release included collaborations alongside his own riddims and reached number one in Juno’s Reggae and Dancehall chart following its arrival in 2018.

His wider recorded output also included the albums Stand To Order and Dub To Order, both reflecting the relationship between original production and Dub versions that runs throughout Jamaican music culture. Scientific Sound Asia later documented these releases as part of its coverage of Jstar and his Control Tower broadcasts.

The Control Tower programme itself had started on Scientific Sound Asia in 2018 as a regular show concentrating on Dub, bass music and sound-system culture. That radio relationship meant the January 2019 event was not simply an isolated international booking but a physical extension of an artist already contributing regularly to the station.

Jstar’s broadcasts allowed the programme to move through classic Jamaican records, contemporary productions and the different British styles influenced by Reggae and Dub. The connection between radio selection and club performance gave listeners in Ho Chi Minh City an opportunity to hear the person behind the programme operating directly in front of a dancefloor.

Arcan provided an appropriate home for the event because the former venue regularly supported underground electronic music outside the more commercial side of Ho Chi Minh City nightlife. Drum and Bass, Techno, experimental electronic music and bass-oriented events had all appeared there, making the room suitable for Jstar’s mixture of reggae foundations and UK club pressure.

The booking also reflected the international connections developing around Vietnam’s underground music community during this period. A London producer could be broadcasting regularly through a station based in Ho Chi Minh City and then appear physically at a Saigon Dub Station event, linking radio, sound-system culture and the local dancefloor within the same project.

The timing on the last weekend before Tết gave the party another particular place in the city’s calendar. Running from 9 PM until 2 AM, the night offered five hours of bass music before Ho Chi Minh City moved deeper into the annual Lunar New Year period.

Scientific Sound Asia’s work with Jstar continued beyond this event through his broadcasts and archived programmes. The organisation now brings its history together through its radio station, events, DJ agency and music news sections.

Historical events such as Jstar at The Control Tower also document the range of music Scientific Sound Asia was supporting in Ho Chi Minh City. Alongside House, Techno and Drum and Bass events, Reggae, Dub, Dancehall, Hip Hop and sound-system music formed another important part of the platform’s underground programming.

Arcan has since closed, but retaining the event in the archive preserves another part of the venue’s role within Saigon’s independent nightlife. Saigon Dub Station, Scientific Sound Asia and Jstar brought British bass culture and Jamaican musical foundations together for a pre-Tết session built around Reggae, Dub, Hip Hop, Dancehall, Jungle and Drum and Bass.

For listeners who already knew Jstar through The Control Tower, the event brought the radio programme out of the broadcast schedule and onto an Arcan dancefloor. For everyone else, it offered a direct introduction to a producer and selector whose career has been built around connecting Reggae and Dub with the broader language of UK bass music.