Hi! I'm Ralf Dub Flash, and this is my music story. Going online on 4th May 1998, Dub Flash was the first website in the history of the internet dedicated to Dub music. It quickly turned into the Dub Information Portal with features others would later develop for places like Discogs or Myspace. In 2003, Dub Flash Records released its first record, and the Outer Space Dub XPress webshop & distribution opened. In 2007, the radio show Dub Mash aired for the first time. In 2009, the MoonBass Hi+Fi Soundsystem joined the fun. In 2011, the Dub Information Portal was archived. It stayed online for 10 years, then it was put offline. The shop & distribution closed in 2012. MoonBass disbanded in 2015. Dub Mash was quit in 2023. The label and website continue up to this day.

2023 was Dub Flash's 25th anniversary celebrations year. Here you can have a look at the celebrations webpage.

The picture shows me celebrating the 25th anniversary on 4th May 2023.

Before Dub Flash was Dieb in Dub. During my teenage years, I made my first steps into the marvellous world of music. Nicknamed "Der Dieb" ("The Thief") as a joke by a classmate, I played bass for the band "5 Fremde und der Zauberer W.". Around 1993, I started writing raps and making dubby mixtapes. When my projects had to do with Dub music, I added the "in Dub" behind my artist name. I continued the "Dieb in Dub" mixtape series even after Dub Flash started. Thanks to my website, I was able to sell some copies. These were my first steps into the music business. DIDCA050 was the last tape in this series.

The picture shows an artwork for Dieb in Dub by Tanja P. from 1997.

When I visited the World Wide Web for the first time in October 1996, my first search query in the Altavista search engine was "dub". There was nothing except one paragraph about Dub on the "Allmusic" encyclopedia. So I decided to learn HTML and make the first website about Dub myself. Going online on 4th May 1998, Dub Flash was the first website in the history of the internet dedicated to Dub music. In Autumn 1998, Jah Warrior and Dubcreator found the site and offered suggestions. I developed the site accordingly as the "Dub Information Portal". I had features which some years later others would develop for places like Discogs or Myspace, for example news, record and concert reviews, interviews, rare reggae artist photos, polls, an event calendar, a huge link directory and sound files, a live chat, a guestbook, a forum, databases for artists and labels, and also videos - long before YouTube. I did this all manually, coding by hand. I basically had Discogs, YouTube and social media combined in the DIP. Of course on a smaller scale, but the idea was there before other people had their ideas. I never thought that those ideas could be worth billions. The main attraction of the site were my record reviews. By 2011 I had written about 750 reviews and about the same amount in the "to be reviewed" queue. That's when I decided to close the DIP, because I couldn't keep up any longer with the huge amount of new releases coming in during the early 2010s. What a great reason to quit. My task was to bring Dub music to the internet. And so I did. I witnessed thousands of Dub releases since 1998. Compared to the Dub drought of the late 90s, when Dub was almost non-existent, this is pretty great. I helped keeping Dub alive and reviving it. I want to imagine that I played a little role in this. Many people from all around the world made their first steps into the world of Dub music through Dub Flash. That was my hope back then, and when the mission was accomplished, I could retire the site. The archive of the DIP went offline for good in 2021. RIP DIP.

The picture shows the last version of the Dub Information Portal archive (2011-2021).

I don't remember when the idea to start my own official record label first came to light, but I wanna say that it was in Spring 2003. One of the driving forces behind the idea was Dubcreator, who also provided the first tune to be released on DFR, as a birthday gift to Dub Flash's 5 year anniversary festivities. 8 vinyl releases and 2 CD releases happened until 2010. All of them are long-time sold out. Around 2011 I didn't have a vision anymore how to continue releasing vinyls regularly. So I tried a shift towards digital-only. That, however, was not so easy back then. Things eventually slowed down, but in 2016 the sparkle returned after a guest selection for Tom Bauminista's Dub Conference radio show. I played forgotten dubplates and the reactions were positive. I released those dubplates digitally and soon after followed the next vinyl release (2018). From there, things moved forward again, and DFR is going strong again ever since.

When I started the label, I thought about how to get the records to the people. At the same time, various artists had contacted me if I could help them sell their releases. I thus expended my record label to an online record shop and distribution. The whole thing constantly grew and at some point I had to make a decision to make this venture my full job or downsize it back to a hobby. After careful consideration, I decided to downsize. A part of me was sad, because it was so much fun dealing with people like David Dubwise or Ernie B's, but overall I don't think it would have worked out in the long run. I sold the remaining stock until 2021 through Discogs. It's all gone. Nothing remains except memories. Maybe my favourite memory is when a Japanese distributor requested an exclusive Japan-only CD release from me. That's how DFR010 came to life within only a few weeks. What a story... for another day.

During an Erasmus study program in 2006/07 in Northern Europe, I stumbled into the public founding meeting of a local radio station called "Oi fm". They needed volunteers and a week later the Monday evening belonged to me with two radio shows in a row. I got a crash course into how to run a radio program and then I started. "Dub Mash" was one of the two shows. A couple of months later, I made an official internship for Oi fm. They kept airing my (old and new) episodes until the station closed in 2011. Since then, "Dub Mash" was produced irregularly as guest features for other shows, for example Tom Bauminista's "Dub Conference" on Omyradio. In 2023 I decided that there is no point in doing new episodes anymore. The existing episodes are available on Dub Flash's Mixcloud channel.

MoonBass Hi+Fi was a heavyweight Dub soundsystem in Berlin from around 2009 to 2015, owned and operated by High Moff Dub Pipe and his Boba Fat Warriors of whom I was a part.

We organised various dances in Berlin, but for different reasons, our experience wasn't overly positive, so we eventually decided to end the adventure and move on to other projects. Most of the scoops went to Graograman HiFi Soundsystem which continues the MoonBass-legacy.

The picture was drawn by Amanda Rose, daughter of the US-based radio DJ Dr. StrangeDub, in 2011.

That's me. The guy behind Dub Flash. It has always been a one-man-project. Born and raised in Berlin (West), the heart of Europe, music is a big hobby for me, and one thing that keeps driving me since I was a young teenager. While my main musical love is Dub music, I have and am also involved in other genres and projects. But at the end, I always return to Dub.

I've had my first DJ gig around 1993/94, still underaged. My first official DJ gig in a proper club was around 1996/97. During the most active Dub Flash years between 2003-2010, I played Dub sets all around Europe, including festivals. I'm not officially retired, but after 2010, I only played a few sets, often as a guest feature or even anonymously. There isn't really a reason for that, it just so happened, and I never liked being in the spotlight anyway.

That's also why at Dub Flash Records, I mostly am the producer in the background, releasing other people's work. While my preferred Dub style is heavy electronic stepping dubwise without vocals, it was always important to me, that Dub Flash features a big variety of different Dub styles, from reggae to rootical Dub to technoid Steppers to leftfield dubby beats, you can find it all.

It was and is also important to me to focus purely on the music, and not on the cultural aspects around this genre. My project is to highlight the musical genre Dub. Pure Dub.

Outside of the realm of music, I prefer to stay private. I seek peace and quiet, that's why I dream of the Andromedub Galaxy. I don't know anyone from there who is not a nice entity.