We caught up with legendary producer Adrian Sherwood on the heels of his latest effort behind the boards: Horace Andy’s new album, Midnight Scorchers.
“I’m just very, very proud of it. We didn’t rush it. We spent two years making it. We started it before lockdown. And we kept improving it, so I was sending Horace back and forth to Jamaica. Let’s do this better. Let’s do this again.”
Released in 1978, Prince Far I’s Cry Tuff Dub Encounter Chapter 1 is a pivotal album at the juncture of Jamaican and British dub—a nexus of dub’s origins and everything the music would evolve into. It’s a dank and earthy affair full of Flabba Holt’s & Sly Dunbar’s driving, deep-nodding basslines that still pack enough power to rattle the foundations of Babylon.
When I call up the reggae legend, Lee “Scratch” Perry, The Upsetter, to talk about his new album Rainford I reach him on a grainy WhatsApp audio connection. He’s in Jamaica and he’s in bed, “looking at the lights. looking at the day, and looking at the night.”
Perry’s in his eighties and when he gets going he speaks in limericks, but he doesn’t come across as wacky, just joyful. The first thing I notice about Perry is the giggle that roils through the conversation and punctuates his sentences. It’s disarming, a Buddha-like by-product of a lifetime of producing joy by way of deep and heavy rhythms, and meant for killing egos.
“I never tried to make a commercial record…I know that sounds like a bit of a weird thing to say, because you try to sell records, but I was always […]