Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something, something, something. Something to do with Medicinal Compound. Or other. Here’s where we are now…
The work that Lee Perry created in his studio the Black Ark between 1973-78 is one of the greatest bodies of work by anybody, in any field, in history. None of this can be understated, as a sonic adventurer, Perry trod his own path. His Jamaican music, whilst keeping to the formula of time signature and subject matter, was unlike anybody else’s in sound, in texture, in feel.
He created a field of his own, high above the clouds and a million miles from any other sonic experiments. King Tubby’s dub is studio trickery, gizmos and gadgets. Perry’s version works with the rhythm in a completely different way. His music contains the space, daplpled light and feel of the jungle. Dread mind expansion. Tubby’s dub is the sound of urban terror, guns blazing in Waterhouse. Writ large.
Even in the age of the internet, solid definitive information about the founding and building of the Jamaican music industry is still thin on the ground. Just like the story of the ark in the old testament, the story of the Black Ark is shrowded in mystery, rumour, conjecture and misinformation. Legend attests that Perry built the ark in his yard in 1973, ostensibly to look after his own productions, following a series of frightful deals that left his music scattered to the wind, with dozens of ‘owners.’ Over the next five years he recorded many hundreds of sessions in an ongoing experiment to take sound into the deepest recesses of his thoughts. In an outhouse built with bare breezeblock, he invented a sound that fifty plus years later still baffles those at the forefront of modern audio technology.
He had a gift and in his own wondrously garbled way, he was good enough to share it with the world. Dreadlocks In Moonlight was cut as a demo for Bob Marley in 1976. It was allegedly mixed in the Black Ark on the night that gunmen burst into Marley’s home at 56 Hope Road and shot Bob, his wife Rita and manager, Don Taylor. According to Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, Perry’s insistence that he call by the studio before visiting Marley to hear his recording probably saved him from being shot also.
Perry mumbles his way through his mystical mumbai-jumbo, a familiar theme of ‘big neck police’ creating trouble in the world, where Rastafari -and ultimately- only peace and love will save the day. He adds a melancholic psycho babble edge to it that Marley would have never have brought to the table. And never mind the eye popping nature of the lyrics, that production can and will send you into space. A wondrous space. Outer Space. Man.
I use the words staggeringly beautiful, yet I don’t use them lightly. This is one of Perry’s very greatest offerings, a true work of art that continues to shimmer and glow many decades after its inception. I have posted the discomix here below, only because the dub/version can’t be overlooked either. The depth and breadth of sonic exploration is a step in a still unknown direction.
Sometimes, only sometimes, music leaves you speechless. I have been listening to this tune for years, every single time it touches something, i mean really touches something. Every single time. Never misses. Not much music does that. Not much anything does that, every single time. enjoy. x
Lee “Scratch” Perry (born Rainford Hugh Perry; 20 March 1936 – 29 August 2021
bernie@happening-things.com 