Dub began in late-1960s Jamaica as a studio practice rather than a genre: engineers stripped vocals out of reggae recordings and rebuilt what remained with echo, reverb, tape delay and enormous bass, treating the mixing desk as an instrument. Nearly every later form of bass-led electronic music descends from it.

In Tokyo dub matters twice over — as music programmed at clubs like NUMM in Shibuya, and as an approach that shaped how rooms here are built. A club that invests in sub-bass reproduction and a treated room is chasing something dub engineers defined fifty years ago.

Nights are typically slower than house or techno and far more spacious, with the weight sitting under the floor rather than in the kick.

See also listening bars and disco, or read about NUMM.