CREATION YOUTH RECORDS 13th September 2024
Although he died three years ago, here is a Scratch Perry release assembled by legendary producer and Killing Joke bassist, Youth. They’d begun a project that was never completed but Youth has pulled together rhythms, vocals recorded before Lee’s death, snippets of interviews and added on plenty of guests, keen to pay tribute to his genius. When I saw Lee Perry play live in 2016 and listened to recent releases, it was clear that the focus was on his vocals over the mixing and music. The rambling thoughts of an elderly mad man, keen to share his religious insights and unpleasant thoughts on sexuality, atop beats from other people, rather than himself, were not the genius we remembered.
Fortunately, here Youth has been selective and created an assemblage of highlights, blending old, new, ramblings, sweet guest sounds and, most importantly, heavy riddims. The dubbed beats are just the thing for easy skanking and, as with the best dubs, the focus is on the moving, with the rest a clever decoration, a place to show the flash ideas. Naturally, Youth puts in plenty of his own heavy bass guitar alongside moog, melodica, trombone, etc. The list of guests is special: Holly Cook, Boy George, Don Letts, Caroll Thompson, etc. Zoe Devlin gets to put in a vocal on ‘Iron Shirt’ (aka ‘Chase The Devil’) but that’s as far as we go on older things.
The tape chopping and splicing (digital style) is huge, dropping in gnomic pronouncements (more amusingly weed-burned than wise), echoes, random sounds, melodica snatches and dubby drop-outs. The album is terrific on headphones, with all the production effects mixed across the cans and tickling the mind. Remember to turn it to ear-bleeding volume. Youth calls it “Voodoo magic meets raiders of the lost ark” – the ark being, of course, Scratch’s Jamaican recording shack that he famously burnt down for his own unfathomable reasons. As Youth says – this album was started in the third dimension and Lee Perry oversaw it to completion from an unquantifiable dimension.
It’s a two disc set, with the second being dubs. But I find the first disc the dubbiest, the most full of mind-twisting effects, and flashing samples while the second is simpler and more spacious. Play disc one first.
By no means indispensable; this is still way more interesting than anything else Perry did in the last decade of his life and a loving tribute from Youth and the other contributors, showing the influence the man had on them and the world.