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Version Therapy

Black Ark: Cover art in a Perry vein

The sonic experiments of dubman Lee Scratch Perry

By Nicky Baxter

Like more than a few pop innovations--think of those glorious early Phil Spector sides produced in a studio the size of a condo bedroom--the advent of Jamaican dub music was a concession to economic necessities. In the mid-1960s, rather than fiddling with entirely new songs which took time--and, hence, money--to arrange and record, producers of rock-steady singles began fitting B-sides with "versions," instrumental remixes of the A-side that sometimes included scraps of vocals.

Jamaican record buyers soon acquired a taste for the "versions," and sound system DJs commenced recording their scat-styled raps over hit backing tracks. The introduction of four-track studios in Jamaica allowed for better separation of instruments, which in turn led to dub-style reggae. No one exploited the sonic possibilities of dub more effectively than Lee "Scratch" Perry, the Upsetter.

With Scratch at the controls, dub developed into a tropical version of acid rock. Rather than lead vocals, he positioned instrumental passages as the musical focal point. Like an aural X-ray, his method revealed a song's essence in stark, skeletal relief.

Brittle shards of keyboards and guitar emerged from nowhere and then dropped out, supplanted by a sudden burst of clattering African percussion, followed by trebly vocal fragments. Heightening the feeling of displacement, Perry doused everything in oceans of echo. And borrowing a trick from the British, he added phasing, a technique that simulates the visual traces you might glimpse tripping on a hit of Owsley's finest.

Indeed, Perry himself has always given the impression that he has maybe taken one trip too many; in fact, the man is mad as a hatter, frequently turning interviews into meandering sessions saturated with hilariously delusional pronouncements. Few, however, question his preeminence in the studio. In recognition of Perry's still-fertile imagination, Ariwa/RAS has just released a pair of recordings featuring the Upsetter at the controls, Black Ark Experryments and Super Ape Inna Jungle, with Mad Professor, a Perry protégé and star producer in his own right, assisting.

Named after Perry's famed Black Ark Studio, where in the 1970s he cut a string of influential singles including Zap Pow's spooky "River," Experryments is a truly weird, yet vital, introduction to the man's work.

Against the insistent thud of bass and drum, porous keyboards and spidery guitar, Scratch launches a series of fragmented raps concerning everything from the efficacy of Japanese appliances to jungle bunnies from outaspace. Alternately funny and frightening, these raspy-throated communiqués are unburdened by linear continuity, relying instead on free-associative gambits, made all the more impenetrable by Perry's thick Jamaican patois.

At times, the eccentric dubmaster ululates like a petulant toddler: On the aptly named "Poop Song," for instance, he actually runs through the entire alphabet, cackles about "ca-ca" and generally gives the impression that he has become one with his inner child. And even as you groove to the oddly seductive Devo-styled disco beat, the tune's opening lines ("I am the I am that I am/And I am that lamb to the slaughter/I am King A'thur") are just a little unsettling.

"Jungle Safari," a propulsive number thanks to Mad Professor's simple but effective drumming and smeared horn lines, is shot through with hallucinogenic images of otherworldly aliens negotiating the tricky business of parking their space craft at a jungular supermarket while conversing with Martin Luther King Jr.

A few of Experryment's tracks--"Super Ape in a Good Shape" and "Heads of Government," in particular--have the distinct feel of works-in-progress. On the former, Perry can be heard instructing his musicians on the song's tempo; midway through, he halts the proceedings and begins anew. This unfinished quality, coupled with the singer/producer's cockeyed ranting, makes this an exasperatingly uneven effort.

Although a bit more focused, Super Ape Inna Jungle is also something of a hit-or-miss affair. Besides Mad Professor, Perry recruits music mixers Douggie Digital and Juggler to essay steamy safaris into drum-heavy "jungle" music, a recent offshoot of Britain's techno rave-up scene.

Dispensing for the most part with Black Ark Experryment's brightly multifarious sonic palette, this effort is decidedly darker thanks to the single-minded throb of tom-toms and computer blips. When on the opening track Perry announces, "I am not a human being/I am a machine," it is as much fact as fantasy.

Especially on the cuts mixed by Douggie Digital, dub music's elder statesman's formidable capriciousness is tightly reined; except for his instantly recognizable crackpot talk (here revved up to simulate an automaton on helium), Perry is nearly reduced to just another cog in the dance-music machine. This may be great news for the boys and girls bopping under the floodlights, but tracks like "Nasty Spell" "I'm Not a Human Being" and "Jungle Roots" may drive the sedentary crowd cuckoo.

The techno noose loosens when the Professor assumes command. "Sheba Dance," "Why Complaining?" and the title track reassert the primacy of the old-school dub without abandoning Jungle's big beat. On "Sheba Dance," a chorus of bongos raps out a tribal groove and is answered by the strangled growl of wah-wahed guitar and muted horns. And somehow Scratch's desultory plaints against the queen of England, attorneys and assorted other villains are not incongruous at all, considering the long-standing "ties" the crown has with Africa.

"Super Ape Inna Jungle," the most successful number, is wildly propulsive and, thanks to Perry's whimsical bombast, idiosyncratic as hell. When, against a backwash of backward tapes and a touch of echo, Scratch announces, "I ... am who I am/I am Peter Pan," it's hard not to take him at his word. Close to four decades after he inaugurated the era of dub, Lee Perry continues to come up with crazy-fresh ideas. Get experryenced.

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