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‘Here Comes the Warm Dreads’: Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry & Adrian Sherwood meet Brian Eno uptown
11.29.2019
12:04 pm
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Lee Perry and Adrian Sherwood by Kishi Yamamoto
 
When Rainford, the collaboration between dub legends Lee “Scratch” Perry and On-U Sound’s Adrian Sherwood came out earlier this year, the reviews were stellar, but I will admit to being a bit skeptical.  A five star MOJO review asserted “Rainford is a late-career answer to 1978’s Roast Fish, Collie Weed & Corn Bread and beyond all reasonable expectation, fully its equal.” 

Really? The unequivocal statement above bites off an awful lot, of course, but damn if that album wasn’t—beyond all reasonable expectation—really amazing.

Next from the Perry and Sherwood team-up comes Heavy Rain, the dub version of Rainford. The press release, echoing the MOJO reviewer claims “If Rainford is 2019’s Roast Fish, Collie Weed & Corn Bread then Heavy Rain is its Super Ape,” but this time I was less skeptical. The two greatest dub producers alive, plus the talents of the great Jamaican master trombonist Vin Gordon and another fellow known for his prowess in the studio, Brian Eno? 

The track that features Eno’s contribution is a radical reworking of “Makumba Rock” one of Rainford‘s highlights. Here titled “Here Come the Warm Dreads,” it’s my understanding that Eno only worked on the right channel of the mix. It’s super trippy, almost disorienting. TURN IT UP LOUD. And smoke a joint, would you? Don’t waste it!

Heavy Rain is released on black vinyl, silver vinyl, CD as well as available for download and streaming on December 6th via On-U Sound.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.29.2019
12:04 pm
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‘Underground Roots’: New music from Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and Ari Up from The Slits
08.24.2017
06:36 am
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Though Dub’s processes and sonic lexicon were basically already in place in the 1960s, forward-thinking producers like King Tubby and Lee “Scratch” Perry developed it from its beginning as a method of creating mere instrumental remixes of existing songs to a compositional process in its own right. It’s fair to argue that 1976 was the year that Dub truly transcended its status as a reggae subgenre—in that year, Tubby and Augustus Pablo released King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown and Perry, under the imprimatur of his studio band The Upsetters, released Super Ape, both high-water marks and turning points in the art of Dub.

Perry—possibly best known in Caucasia for his contribution to the Beastie Boys’ “Dr. Lee, PhD”—recorded Super Ape at his Black Ark studio, a modestly appointed facility that was years behind the mid-‘70s state of the recording arts, but by dint of his creativity and bottomless mad-scientist eccentricity, he created sounds that continue to amaze. Per Michael Veal in his 2007 book Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae:

Over the five or so years of its operation, as Perry realized some of the most distinctive sounds to come out of Jamaica, the Black Ark control room and mixing console simultaneously grew into a virtual art installation with photos, random objects, scrawled words, and other items that served a talismanic function for Perry’s creative energy.

Perry was known to run a studio microphone from his console to a nearby palm tree, in order to record what he called the “living African heartbeat.” He often “blessed” his recording equipment with mystical invocations and other icons of supernatural and spiritual power such as burning candles and incense, whose wax and dust remnants were freely allowed to infest his electronic equipment. Perry was also known to blow ganja smoke onto his tapes while recording, to clean the heads of his tape machines with the sleeve of his T-shirt, to bury unprotected tapes in the soil outside of his studio, and to spray them with a variety of fluids including whiskey, blood, and urine, ostensibly to enhance their spiritual properties. In fact, [music journalist] Richard Henderson draws a direct correlation between the technical decay of Perry’s facility and the unique sounds he was able to realize from his studio equipment. In this case, Perry’s “craziness” functioned to reanimate the symbol of sound science with black personality and black spirituality, drawn from a diverse array of ostensibly potent organic sources.

 

 
The Black Ark burned down in 1978, after he recorded the second Upsetters album to bear the “Super Ape” name—Return of the Super Ape. Perry has long claimed that he burned it down himself because it was infested with vampires (though by “vampires” he may have meant bad wiring and by “burned it down himself” he may have meant no he didn’t), and last year, Perry released Black Ark Vampires as an act of revenge on the vampires that drove him to destroy his studio. That recording was made in collaboration with Brooklyn’s Subatomic Sound System, who’ve served as Perry’s live backing band for ten years now, and next month, Perry and the SSS will be releasing Super Ape Returns To Conquer. This is at least the fifth Perry album to boast “Super Ape” in its title, depending on whether/how you regard unofficial releases and comps, and this one directly references the first one—It’s not exactly a track for track remake, but all of the tracks from the 1976 album are transformed somehow on Super Ape Returns To Conquer.

On the subject of revisiting a 40 year old album, the 81 year old Perry helpfully offered “Times changed. It’s not about Black Ark anymore. Evil get squeezed. Too much vanity… Now I come to conquer ragga and destroy raggamuffin, conquer raggamuffin with a new beat and a new sound of dub.” Mononymic Subatomic member EMCH was a bit more specific about the process:

The 1976 original was my top ‘desert island album’ so I made sure we revisited the music with respect but also pushed it somewhere else that might make it feel fresh to new and old listeners alike, as an alternative perspective on the same music and not just cover versions or straight remakes.  Although many people know Scratch, I don’t feel like he really got his due for all his contributions to music and culture and so I hope it shines light on what he has done and, despite what many might expect for an 81 year old, continues to do to inspire people, myself included.

Scratch often jokes that he has no time for the past. His curiousity is ravenous and coupled with energy that drives him every minute of every day to try something new: whether singing, painting, drumming, joking around. He’s still as easily bored as a little kid with ADD. So it took me 7 years of touring with him to convince him to go back, only after I proved that we could do something new with the old music not just repeat it. He has vowed never to perform the same song the same way twice because he says he would be faking the feeling and betraying the audience.

After the jump, the premiere of “Underground Roots,” a remake of a Super Ape track originally titled simply “Underground.” The new version features vocals from the late Ari Up of The Slits…

READ ON
Posted by Ron Kretsch
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08.24.2017
06:36 am
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Fire in Babylon: Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s ‘secret studio’ burns to the ground with everything in it
12.04.2015
02:32 pm
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This is sad to hear: According to a message that he personally left on his Facebook page, Jamaican-born producer/dubmeister Lee “Scratch” Perry has (hopefully accidentally) burned his “secret laboratory” in Switzerland to the ground. He lost everything, including (according to another message he posted) master tapes. With an upcoming tour planned, Perry reached out to his fans for help with stagewear:

HALLO MY FANS
SOMETHNG VERY VERY SAD HAPPEND
I FORGOTT TO OUT A CANDLE AND MY WHOLE SECRET LABORATORY BURNED OUT.
MY WHOLE LIFE COLECTIONS,ARTS,MY MAGIC HATS, MY MAGIC BOOTS, ALL MY CRAZY SHOW OUTFITS AND COSTUMES:KING,POPE,GENERAL,MAGICIAN….. ALL MY ELECTRONICS AND STUDIO EQUIPMENT AND MY MAGIC MIC, BOOKS, MUSIK, CDS…
EVERYTHING GONE!!!!

I AM SO SAD AND MY WIFE IS SO MAD

[Not without justification, obviously!]
 

 
He continued:

TO MY ANGELS THAT ALWAYS GIVE ME PERFECT THINGS
IF YOU HAVE MADE SOMETHING FOR ME TO BRING IT TO THE SHOW WHEN IM IN YOUR AREA, IT WOULD BE SUPER IF YOU SEND THAT TO ME IN ADVANCE BY POST SO I CAN HAVE IT BEFORE I START WITH SHOWS IN MARCH, BECAUSE NOW IM GOING TO JAMAIKA AND WILL NOT HAVE THE TIME TO LOOK OR MAKE SPECIAL OUTFITS.
SEND ME A PRIVATE MESSAGE AND I WILL SEND YOU THE ADRESS.
ALSO WRITE ME WHERE YOU ARE LOCATED
THEN I WILL PUT YOU + ? ON THE GUESTLIST WHEN I COME TO YOUR AREA AND WITH BACKSTAGE ACSESS SO I CAN THANK YOU PERSONALY
GOD BLESS
LOVE £$P

The 79-year-old Jamaican alchemist who can apparently turn shit into gold—at least he knows how to make lemonade when life deals him all lemons—is reaching out to his fans and they are responding with offers of clothes, stage costumes and “Super Ape” headdresses.

A street mural artist in Brazil named Feoflp has already painted this tribute to Perry:
 

 
This isn’t the first time a fire has laid waste to one of Perry’s workspaces. In 1979, after months of erratic behavior that saw him cover nearly every surface inside his Black Ark studio in Kingston, Jamaica with a black magic marker, Perry claims that he burned the legendary backyard recording studio to the ground himself to exorcise it of evil spirits. Friends and family have later said that he was just being dramatic and that the fire had actually been caused by faulty electrical wiring in 1983.

After the jump, vintage 1970s footage of “Scratch” in action at the Black Ark…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.04.2015
02:32 pm
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‘Hold Me Upsetter’: Free download from The Orb with Lee Scratch Perry

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Lee Perry and The Orb? That’s a match made in psychedelic dub heaven!

Taken from the forthcoming collaboration album The Observer In The Star House, which is out in September, ‘Hold Me Upsetter’ is a neat little slice of bass-heavy shuffle-house. You can download it for free below, and if this is a good example of the rest of the album, then both electronica and dub aficionados have a lot to be excited about.

There’s more info on the album (and some funny pictures of a very young Dr Alex Patterson) over at theorb.com.
 

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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06.22.2012
12:24 pm
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‘Put away stupidness’: Dub legend Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry gives advice to Lil’ Wayne

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As a filmmaker who’s shot documentaries on both Lil’ Wayne and Lee “Scratch” Perry, Adam Bhala Lough thought it a good idea to cross wires a bit and let the eccentric 76-year-old dub master bestow a bit of mellow wisdom upon the drank-sippin’ 30-year-old rap supastar.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Rubber Dubber: Lee “Scratch” Perry action figure
Lee “Scratch” Perry’s Classic dub album Blackboard Jungle
Surreal Lee “Scratch” Perry beer commercials

Posted by Ron Nachmann
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05.12.2012
02:27 pm
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Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s classic dub album ‘Blackboard Jungle’
03.14.2012
12:57 pm
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Reggae music is one of those things that really divides people. Like country music. You’re either all in or all out. And it’s usually impossible to change someone’s mind about the subject.

BUT… but… if I was trying to Jedi-mindfuck all of you reggae skeptics out there reading this, en masse, into giving it a chance, then the track I think you should listen to—preferably LOUD and with you as stoned as hell—is this, the lead track from Lee “Scratch” Perry and the Upsetters’ classic Blackboard Jungle Dub, a tune called “Black Panta.”

Blackboard Jungle Dub, recorded in 1973, is considered the first full-length dub album. Apparently the great dub producer KIng Tubby was in control of the echo-drenched mixes. If you listen closely, this would appear to be a stereo mix, but it’s not. It’s two different mono channels. Each channel is mixed down to a insanely trippy conclusion—in mono—and then married to the other. Fantastic! It’s a sonic masterpiece of incredible genius. (Whoever uploaded this did a good good of keeping the separation, so you can really hear it properly).
 

 
Below is a mini-documentary about the album and Perry’s first foray into dubstep, remixing Blackboard Jungle Dub with Dubblestandart, Subatomic Sound System and Jahdan Blakkamoore:
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.14.2012
12:57 pm
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Surreal Lee Scratch Perry beer commercials
05.06.2011
01:52 am
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Lee “Scratch” Perry’s Guinness ad campaign is several years old but I had to share this trio of high quality versions of what has to be some of the loopiest shit to ever appear on TV.
 

 
Perry has a new album coming out on May 10.

Rise Again is a guest-heavy affair, with Bill Laswell behind the mixing boards and a batch of collaborators that include TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe, P-Funk’s Bernie Worrell, Sly and Robbie’s Sly Dunbar and backing musicians for the likes of Tricky, Wu-Tang, Matisyahu and Shakira, among others.

Here’s a track called “Higher Level.” Sounds like vintage, dubby, Upsetter to me. Tunde Adebimpe singing background vocals.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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05.06.2011
01:52 am
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