Lee “Scratch” Perry
King Perry
FALSE IDOLS
Recorded in the midst of the pandemic’s hellscape, finished before his death (or is he, like Sun Ra, simply resting on Saturn?) in August 2021, a record of Lee Perry’s—posthumous or not—was bound to sound like every other album of Scratch’s since the start of the 2000s: a punky reggae party favor dipped in absinthe, spliced through with space-y sprocket dub touches, and featuring the producer-toaster’s bubbly, mumbling fireside chatting.
Released by Tricky’s False Idols label and featuring several of his remixes and track productions, the modern dub innovator is the perfect artist to bring Perry’s future-forward, earthen grooves to their fruition. Tricky’s brand of peyote-inspired, poetic gangster trip-hop was born of Perry’s original Jamaican soulful sound, and floating funky tracks such as “100lbs of Summer” (featuring South London psych-R&B vocalist Greentea Peng) and the haunted “Green Banana” (with Happy Mondays’ Shaun Ryder in the mix) are a genuine marriage between two like-minded sonic seducers. With that, it’s no wonder that “Future of My Music” featuring Tricky and Marta as its vocalists is so spirited—their connection is as clear as its rhythms are dense and murky.
Along with re-confirming his ages-old devotion to God on solo tracks such as “Jesus Life” and “King of the Animals,” Perry does something not so much unexpected as it is thrillingly new in bringing his ancient-aspirational sound into the present with hot splashes of big beat and chilly synthwave courtesy of the project’s other sound man, Daniel Boyle. Apparently, Boyle and Scratch prodded and provoked each other into a rich, fresh sound evolved from dub’s past—one that makes Perry’s last-ever vocal, “Goodbye,” all the more bracing in its originality, to say nothing of its tenderness. Of course Lee “Scratch” Perry left us wanting more. Here's hoping Saturn has a nice, state-of-the-art recording studio.
