Lee "Scratch" Perry - King Scratch (Musical Masterpieces from the Upsetter Ark-ive) (2022)

Marking the first anniversary of his passing, this bumper set spans a lifetime of scene-leading, innovative production by the lyrical boaster.

Holding 63 prime cuts (check each format for diff tracklisting), from early rocksteady and ska to Susan Cadogan’s ‘Hurt So Good’ and an unreleased mix of ‘Police & Thieves’, Trojan’s posthumous set surveys the many monikers of Rainford Hugh Lee Perry, aka Lee “Scratch” Perry, The ‘Upsetter’, Pipecock Jackxon. It covers the wee dynamo keeping in step, or even leading the step, of Jamaican music’s remarkable evolutions and cycles between rocksteady, ska, roots reggae and the bith of dub, which he can surely lay claim to developing, if not originating.

Most crucially the set centres on transmissions form the Black Ark Studio, Perry’s portal to parallel dimensions and a crucible of modern Jamaican artforms, which notably manifested some of The Wailers’ classic works with Bob Marley, not to mention recordings by everyone from The Congos to Junior Murvin and Augustis Pablo (the list is endless). Between its inception in 1973 and infamous torching in 1979, Perry defined the notion of thinking laterally or outside-the-box, innovating an incredible spectrum of sounds from relatively rudimentary 4-track (when compared with the big desks and equipment elsewhere at the time) tape and old boxes, deploying rudely crafty concrète tekkerz and diffusing them with psychedelic, animist electro-acoustic mixing magick that can make the adjacent GRM lot look like coiffed poodles.