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Lee "Scratch" Perry: Rise Again

M.O.D. Technologies

As legacies go, there isn’t much left for Lee Perry to prove. By the time he torched his Black Ark Studios in 1979, he’d already changed Jamaican music forever on landmark sessions with Bob Marley, The Congos and his own backing band The Upsetters, among many others. Rise Again winds the clock back to the low-end Jamaican dub sound Scratch helped invent, and that’s a good thing. Ex-Matisyahu bassist Josh Werner is joined here by drummers Sly Dunbar, Hamid Drake and Guy Licata, with Bill Laswell at the mix controls, for an old-school groove excursion that highlights Scratch as shaman (“Higher Level” with TV On The Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe ), instigator (“Scratch Message”), prognosticator (“Orthodox,” with Ethiopian singer Gigi Shibabaw ) and nutritionist (“Japanese Food”). At 75, Perry might be a little past his prime as wordsmith, but he’s still got personality to burn.