Return from Planet Dub

The legendary producer, singer, and bandleader Lee "Scratch" Perry gets prominent billing on this release, but in fact what it is, is a Dubblestandart album to which Perry contributes vocals. In a certain sense, though, every Dubblestandart album is a Lee "Scratch" Perry album, because since the gradual demise of Dub Syndicate it has been Dubblestandart's duty to carry on the psycho-dub tradition of Perry's Black Ark studio almost singlehandedly. Helping them to shoulder the weight on this album are not only Perry himself, but also the always-brilliant and always-slightly-crazy Ari Up, singer Gudrun Liemberger, and even famous film director David Lynch (who contributes the occasional spoken word bit). There are nods back to the glory days of the Ark, such as recapitulations of such classic Upsetters material as "Chase the Devil" (a rhythm made famous by Max Romeo) and "Blackboard Jungle"." And unfortunately, there are also plenty of excursions into the topics that seem to fascinate Perry more and more as he gets older: namely, his own bedroom expertise and his own excretory functions. If hearing about those things is less than fascinating to you, then skip around the program a bit — no matter where you land, you'll hear ten-megaton grooves from the mighty Dubblestandart and all kinds of quirky and enticing vocal contributions from the others. The second disc in the package includes dub, techno, and dubstep remixes of tracks from the main program.