Sound System Scratch

Though Lee Perry has made brilliant music at all stages of his career, the years between the opening of the Black Ark studio in 1973 and its 1979 closure found the Jamaican producer operating at his creative peak. During this period he cut some of the most revered reggae full-lengths of all time, with artists like the Congos, Junior Murvin, Max Romeo, and others. He also produced a slew of wildly experimental dub sides that carved a new role for the producer as musician, arranger, and organizer of sound. These tunes originally appeared as dub plates, pressed in limited quantities and distributed among the operators of Kingston soundsystems for use in the dancehalls. They are, if anything, even more wildly experimental than what appeared on Perry’s officially released dub full-lengths. Indeed, many of these cuts are mind-bendingly strange. Take “Chim Cherie," a loose instrumental workout yoked to the heavily treated rhythm of a primitive drum machine, or “Roots Train Number Two,” a spaced-out take on Junior Murvin’s “Roots Train Number One” that dubs the original into cosmic oblivion.