I heard that the owner of Custard Cube record shop cleans his records with Pledge furniture polish. Don't know how much truth there is in that but be careful if you go buying records there. Most I've seen in there are in poor condition but I haven't been in for a long time.
Back to beeps, blues and rhythms...
Lee Perry is 75 years old, still performing live and recording as well as appearing live or sampled on lots of modern records. I don't know his whole history as I am not a music nerd but his name pops up time and time again and in general he produces some terrific reggae and dub. I'm not too sure about the dubstep (link below), some of it is good but some doesn't float my boat at all. The point is though that if Scratch uses electronic beeps, whistles and whatever in his recordings (for over 20 years now), then that surely is a good recommendation, or at least an indication that electronic music might have some gems amongst it.
I posted 3 reggae tunes on the Accyweb jukebox - Jacob Miller prod. King Tubby, Jolly Bros prod. Lee Perry, and Bim Sherman prod. Sherman/Tubby - each with the dub version at the end. In the 60s and 70s, unbeknown to most UK music lovers except perhaps some living in Brixton or West Indian communities, producers like Lee Scratch Perry, King Tubby, Bunny Lee and Niney Holness were producing hundreds of 7" singles with vocal on one side, dub on the other. The rest of us were listening to Steel Pulse, Specials, Selecter, Bob Marley and a few others as that was all we knew about (if any of you know different, I'd love to hear it!) These started coming to my attention in the 80s through Trojan I think (via Radio Lancs On The Wire program). There is lots of absolutely cracking stuff completely overlooked by the mainstream - the mainstream just plays the derivatives usually with a pop feel or some other genre mixed in to dilute it for radio and tv listeners ears. (BBC TV is totally disgusting in their treatment of the whole reggae genre, Reggae Britannia was so far off the mark it is untrue).
Anyway, in those dub versions you can hear the first signs of the recording engineer and mixing desk man stamping their influences on a record, with echo, reverb etc. This has developed into electronic beeps, samples and all kinds of sounds you never heard before being used. King Tubby's was a master and I don't think it gets better than his mixes, and OK they weren't electronic beeps as such. But he has influenced so many of today's mixologists such as Adrian Sherwood that they are producing stuff almost equally as good. Sherwood, like Perry, tastefully uses electronics and samples but there are still the traditional instruments laying the foundation on most records, although some are purely electronic and good in their own right. In general I prefer the ones with traditionally instrumented rhythms on them (you will be pleased to know Wyn
An example with a bit of electronics.
You may also be interested to know that about 30 or 40 7" singles per week are being released that are in the reggae, reggae dub, dubstep and ska genre, so I guess there is a big scene going on in London. I haven't bought any of these records, most seem to be re-releases of 60s and 70s stuff, as I don't have deep pockets and there are only so many hours in a day to listen.