press praise for the New Lee “Scratch” Perry dub album Heavy Rain
Find the media’s reaction to Lee Perry’s Heavy Rain, the dub companion to the critically-acclaimed Rainford album which came out this Summer. On Heavy Rain, the Upsetter and co-producer Adrian Sherwood have produced a radical bass heavy re-version of the original tapes with a host of guest musicians including Brian Eno and Vin Gordon.
When Rainford, the collaboration between dub legends Lee “Scratch” Perry and On-U Sound’s Adrian Sherwood came out earlier this year, the reviews were stellar, but I will admit to being a bit skeptical. A five star MOJO review asserted “Rainford is a late-career answer to 1978’s Roast Fish, Collie Weed & Corn Bread and beyond all reasonable expectation, fully its equal.” Really? The unequivocal statement above bites off an awful lot, of course, but damn if that album wasn’t-beyond all reasonable expectation-really amazing.
Next from the Perry and Sherwood team-up comes Heavy Rain, the dub version of Rainford. The press release, echoing the MOJO reviewer claims “If Rainford is 2019’s Roast Fish, Collie Weed & Corn Bread then Heavy Rain is its Super Ape,” but this time I was less skeptical. The two greatest dub producers alive, plus the talents of the great Jamaican master trombonist Vin Gordon and another fellow known for his prowess in the studio, Brian Eno? The track that features Eno’s contribution is a radical reworking of “Makumba Rock” one of Rainford‘s highlights. Here titled “Here Come the Warm Dreads,” it’s my understanding that Eno only worked on the right channel of the mix. It’s super trippy, almost disorienting. TURN IT UP LOUD. And smoke a joint, would you? Don’t waste it!Richard Metzger/DangerousMinds.net 11.29
As he gears up for a brief U.S. tour this fall, Lee “Scratch” Perry is feeling unusually frisky.”Movement is very important,” he says over the phone from Negril, Jamaica, his sandpapery but evermelodic voice accentuating the point. “The more we travel and meet people, the stronger we get. And then, as we get stronger, we see more people that believe in God. They know that God is coming to save them one day. It’s like Bob [Marley] said: Jesus was a healer, and those who cannot be healed were not made to be healed. And those who are healed were made to be healed. And who feels, were made to be feeled.
And those who squeal, were made to be squealed. And those who dream, were made to be dreamed. It’s all still a dream.”He lets loose with a hearty laugh. Perry has never been one to take the world too seriously; even a cursory look at the long, humid path he’s blazed as a record producer at the forefront of Jamaican reggae is a testament to that ethos. From the pioneering sound of 1973’s Blackboard Jungle Dub, which he coengineered with dub godfather King Tubby, to the Congos’ righteous Heart of the Congos, as well as Super Ape, Roast Fish Collie Weed & Corn Bread and so many more classic productions from his legendary Black Ark studio, Perry has always gone his own way. And, in the process, he earned his many trickster-ish nicknames, including the one for which he’s most universally known: The Upsetter.[read the entire feature: https://relix.com/articles/detail/global-beat-lee-scratch-perry/]Bill Murphy/Relix December
Following in the lineage of such iconic dub music masters as Osbourne “King Tubby” Ruddock and Lee “Scratch” Perry, producer Adrian Sherwood is the UK’s contemporary pioneer of dub: the reverb-filled, beats-rattling, bass-thick music that erupted from “sound system” parties in Kingston, Jamaica in the 1960s.In the 1980s, London-born Sherwood cast a wide net with his On-U Sound Records label. He has produced, mixed, or remixed artists as diverse as KMFDM, Depeche Mode, Garbage, and Nine Inch Nails. But if you ask him, he’ll cite records with dub innovator Lee “Scratch” Perry-Time Boom X De Devil Dead (1987), From the Secret Laboratory (1990), and The Mighty Upsetter (2008)-as his most vital.The pair recently reunited for the album Rainford (On-U Sound), octogenarian Perry speak-rambling over nine tracks of sometimes mystical, always grooving, spacey dub-dislocation. (Heavy Rain, an even dubbier revision, will appear in December.)[read the entire feature: https://www.stereophile.com/content/adrian-sherwoods-dub-trip]Ken Micallef/Stereophile.com 11/26
The follow-up to Rainford is a dub journey called Heavy Rain. The On-U Sound release finds the legendary Lee “Scratch” Perry joining forces with Brian Eno and others for a truly dubby party. If the presence of Eno and others doesn’t entirely re-invent what Perry’s doing here, at least the album is, as expected, a reliable dub journey.”Here Come the Warm Dreads” is a smooth skank, a jam interspersed with weird, space-y hooks, and Perry’s own inimitable vocal stylings, while “Mindworker” (feat. Gaudi) is even more of a trip, shades of funk here. “Englightened” (feat. Gaudi) is supple and soulful, and one of the better things here, even as “Dreams Come True” (feat. Gaudi) sees Perry stretch out the groove until it nearly collapses under the weight of the bass and horns. If this is dub, it’s dub that has a bit of a swing about it, even if the groove here is a rather languid one. To his credit, Lee “Scratch” Perry still manages to make this sort of thing sound positively unearthly, and one marvels at his ability to record so many things and have them remain such distinctive creations…Glenn Griffith/APessimistIsNeverDisappointed.com 12/7
Rock-steady grooves moving beneath phantom chants, haunted harmonica and sad brass, “Rain,” rains, “Soldiers collecting souls,” and “Children of the Night,” over slippery redemption days blazing in faith served by curdling serpentine certainty. Karmic shaman Perry’s scrubbed dub companion to this year’s revelatory, “Rainford,” welcomes mothership liberations; baptized night-walker trance channeling blessed messages through loose, echo-chamber complacency and studio-proven juju. J. Noyd/Maximum Ink December
On December 6th, arrives the full-length reworking of the Lee “Scratch” Perry album “Rainford,” which was originally released back in June. This new album titled “Heavy Rain” takes the songs from the “Rainford” album and produces a new, bass heavy version of the album with the help of co-producer Adrian Sherwood. Kicking things off is a short jungle intro with words of wisdom from Perry, before the deep, sonic thunderous groove of “Here Comes The Warm Dreads,” featuring a guest appearance from Brian Eno. Next, Vin Gordon shows up on the electrifying beats and horns of “Rattling Bones And Crowns,” before arriving at the spaced-out dub version of “Mindworker” and the slow, swaying rhythm of “Crickets In Moonlight.” The album finishes while climbing aboard Lee Perry’s star-ship titled “Space Craft” and the reggae/folk vibe of “Heavy Rainford,” featuring Vin Gordon once again. Jim Pasinski/JPsMusicBlog.com 10/15
As well as highlighting the deft musicianship of the original backing band on the Rainford sessions (which include core On-U luminaries from Creation Rebel, Tackhead and Dub Syndicate) these re-works also invite some further players into the cosmic mix. Brian Eno makes an unexpected right channel entry into “Here Come The Warm Dreads”, a heavily processed sound system overhaul of Rainford highlight “Makumba Rock”, cheekily re-titled as a nod to Eno’s own debut solo album. This completes a circle started in 1981 with African Head Charge’s My Life In A Hole In The Ground similarly referencing the contemporary collaboration between Eno and David Byrne, and their “vision of a psychedelic Africa”. Elsewhere, legendary trombonist Vin Gordon (one of the hornsmen on Bob Marley & The Wailers Exodus amongst many other classic sides) lends his distinctively woozy blowing to tracks such as “Rattling Bones And Crowns” (a late night flipside to “Kill Them Dreams Money Worshippers”) and “Crickets In Moonlight” (“Cricket In The Moon” refracted through some beautifully louche late summer heat haze lens). The likeliest contender to a title track, “Heavy Rainford” strips back the narrative from “Autobiography Of The Upsetter” to ride the rhythm with all sorts of mixing desk tricks, anchored by the killer “I Am The Upsetter” hook from LSK. It’s important to note that it’s not all Rainford re-works though: “Dreams Come True” and “Above And Beyond” are Scratch and Sherwood originals, heard here for the first time and equally strong material for this purple patch in the career of an unstoppable Jamaican maverick and true musical pioneer. 