Victor Rice

An influential presence across reggae, ska, and dub both live and behind the mixing desk, Victor Rice has built a career that earned him regard on two continents. Born April 17, 1967, in Syosett, Nassau County, New York, he began piano lessons at age four and first pictured himself as a professional musician by thirteen. During his teenage years he developed a deep interest in ska, and in 1988 he joined the New York City third-wave ska band the Scofflaws on bass. Starting in 1991 he turned his attention to studio work, helming the Scofflaws’ first album; in the years that followed he produced or engineered sessions for numerous other ska acts such as the Pietasters, the Slackers, the Toasters, and the Epitones. He continued performing as well, appearing with the Stubborn All-Stars and the New York Ska-Jazz Ensemble while also touring behind Jamaican ska originators Desmond Dekker and Laurel Aitken.

Once dub captured his interest, Rice became a regular at Version City, an analog facility in New York City, where he produced and engineered sessions while testing new ways to reshape existing tracks. Those experiments yielded his debut solo album, 1999’s Victor Rice at Version City, a vivid tribute to classic Jamaican recording aesthetics. Alongside studio duties he maintained his bass technique with the Victor Rice Octet and performed alone under the name Strikkly Vikkly, creating live dub mixes on vintage signal-processing gear. He also cultivated a profitable side career scoring and designing audio for television, counting HBO, Showtime, Nickelodeon, SyFy, and Lifetime among his clients. In 2002 Rice relocated from New York to São Paulo, Brazil, where he joined the ska group Firebug BR and collaborated with the country’s foremost reggae sound system, Dubversão Sistema de Som. He remained active as a producer and engineer, forging a close relationship with Easy Star Records on its well-known dub tribute projects, among them Dub Side of the Moon, Easy Star’s Lonely Hearts Dub Band, and Radiodread.

His second solo release, 2004’s In America, offered a set of dubwise instrumentals shaped by both Jamaican and Latin influences. In 2010 he established Studio Copan, his own recording space in São Paulo, and simultaneously founded Total Running Time, a label and multifaceted production company. Despite ongoing production commitments, Rice completed his third solo album, Smoke, in 2017—a blend of ska, rocksteady, sambas, and jazz that carried an international sensibility.