Duff Review: Flying Vipers "Cuttings"

Music ADD Records
Digital (July 3, 2020)/LP and cassette (Fall 2020, Jump Up Records)
2020

(Review by Steve Shafer)

Back in the mid-nineties when I ran the Moon Records promo department out of a bedroom in my apartment (with my assistant and an intern or two), I often played dub albums (loads of Lee "Scratch" Perry after reading an extensive overview/ranking of his recordings in the Beastie Boys' magazine "Grand Royale"), as the rhythms and melodies would help keep us working at a steady pace without being too intrusive or overpowering. While I'm certainly not implying that dub is akin to background music a la Muzak, it is great music to play either while doing something else or when taking the time to do nothing but be alone with your thoughts. If Flying Vipers' Cuttings had been available back then, it would have been in heavy rotation on the office stereo, as well as during the off hours.

After releasing a series of superb cassettes (The Green Tape, The Copper Tape), and physical and digital singles ("Highest Region," "Nervous Breakdub (Pandemic Version)" b/w "PMA Calling") over the past few years, Flying Vipers have finally issued their first long-player Cuttings, which, as one would expect, is crammed with incredibly hooky, dubby roots reggae instrumentals reminiscent of Dennis Bovell's magnificent productions and Perry's recent and awesome collaborations with Adrian Sherwood and Daniel Boyle.

Cuttings, of course, refers not only to the leaves that have been harvested from cannabis plants, but these musical fruits of the band's labors in the studio--and they have one bounteous crop here. Highlights include "Leaf Miner," which has a wonderful interplay between a rigid and relentless bass riff and a series of answering free flowing Rhodes piano lines; the prescient, apocalyptic "Two Twenties Clash" (and people thought things were bad back in '77!); the Bunny "Striker" Lee tribute "Flight of the Gorgon" with its majestic, panoramic horns; the bad-ass "Scorpio Son" and its version "Son of Scorpio"; and the supremely confident and untouchable "Puff Adder" (many of the cuts on this album are ripe for being versioned by deejays and singers--and becoming well-known riddims in their own right).

Flying Vipers are comprised of the devastatingly good rhythm section of Marc and John Beaudette (Destroy Babylon, The Macrotones), the gifted Zack Brines (Pressure Cooker) on keys, and Jay Champany (10 Ft. Ganja Plant) on percussion and the master at the analogue controls (plus ace guests on horns, sax, flute, clarinet, and binghi).

If you haven't been paying attention to this band, Cuttings is a brilliant introduction to the mighty Flying Vipers; and if you have, you're going to love this album,

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Duff Guide to Ska Fast Takes: Lee "Scratch" Perry "Rainford"

(Review by Steve Shafer)

I have to admit that following 2018's excellent, Black Ark-sounding The Black Album (with ace producer Daniel Boyle), it took repeated plays for me to get into Lee Scratch Perry's latest album Rainford (CD/LP/digital, On-U Sound, 2019), co-produced and co-written with On-U's Adrian Sherwood. Now that all of these tracks are firmly embedded in my head, I've found that it's very much on par with Perry and Sherwood's phenomenal, left-field classic Time Boom X De Devil Dead, recorded with Dub Syndicate in 1987 (Sherwood and Perry's most recent collaboration was The Mighty Upsetter in 2008). Like Time Boom, Rainford is filled with brilliantly inventive sonic weirdness married to quirkily catchy and compelling reggae tunes--and is sure to be recognized as another essential Lee Scratch Perry album in a catalogue bursting with them.

As expected, Rainford contains common Perry themes (driving out/vanquishing evil; toppling the powerful and selfish rich--see the album artwork) and messages (of black empowerment, anti-racism, and the wisdom of Jah's righteous ways). And as always, there's great substance beneath the seemingly mad surface of exhortations and vocal sound effects (Perry mimicking the cries of babies, the bleats, neighs, and grunts of various animals, and horror movie screams). Perry knows full well that his decades-long reputation for being a bit of a lunatic gives him considerable freedom (or lee-way!) to express some heavy and--what establishment society might consider to be--dangerous ideas and opinions.

Album opener "Cricket on the Moon" begins with Perry reciting, "'Repent,' says the cricket on the moon/'Repent,' says the cricket in the room...Mercy call and judgment come." I've never encountered this expression before, but apparently a moon cricket is an ugly racial slur. In this context, Perry is subverting an aspect of this racist trope--essentially, a black person in a sea of whites--as a metaphor for rastas/Jamaicans/people of color struggling against the dominant, sinful Babylon ("I'm the man in the moon/Who kicked the Pope in him raas"). In addition, there could be another layer of meaning rolled into this song, as 2019 marked the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong being the first (white) human to step on the moon (when researching this epithet, I also found that supposedly Native Americans have used it as a derogatory term for white people). Naturally, cricket-like chirps are incorporated throughout this wonderful, loping reggae track.

The slightly off-kilter "Run Evil Spirit" is in the same vein of Perry and Max Romeo's "Chase the Devil," with various upstanding rastas (whose religiously proscribed diet includes a lot of fish--hence, "fisherman," with its Biblical echoes) and super humans (Perry refers to the "Bionic Man" at one point!) joining forces to rid the land of wickedness: "Fisherman come/Babylon run...Beggars, users, run/Superman a come/And I've told him what you've done, evil spirit/I said you run/Obeah man a run/Spiderman a come..." Unlike most of the mid-tempo tracks on Rainford, the propulsive, almost hypnotic "Makumba Rock" has the power to pack dance floors and refers to the Brazilian via Africa religion of Macumba: "Voodoo rock/Zodiac rock/Makumba rock...From roots asylum/This is mental zodiac/Are you ready for the black magic?"

Perry pictures himself as captain of a futuristic Black Star Liner on "African Starship" (which revisits/reworks Creation Rebel's 1978 Starship Africa), repatriating the black diaspora to a new Ethiopia somewhere out on the final frontier. While, the hard-hitting, militant-sounding "Kill Them Dreams Money Worshippers" envisions Perry entering the nightmarish, fever dreams of the rich to scuttle their rapacious, predatory scams before they can unleash them in reality and cause good people to suffer ("In the land of dreams/The greed is dead/In the land of schemes/Settle dem debts/In the land of flesh and bones/More than stones and bones/Rocklin' horror movies and scary scenes/A horrible place...We're going to have a black magic for you tonight...We are inviting you down to meet your debt...").

Perhaps the most extraordinary song on the record is "Autobiography of The Upsetter," which is exactly what the title indicates. This is Lee "Scratch" Perry's life's story ("This is my undead biographicie and prophesy"), told with surprising candor, self-awareness, and humor. Perry recounts his familial origins ("My Father was a Freemason, my Mother was an Eto Queen/They share a dream together/Said they're going to make a Godly being"; Rainford is Perry's actual first name); the many highlights of his extensive musical career (and related music industry axes to grind--the listener is reminded that Perry still believes Island's Chris Blackwell to be a bloodsucker); even the episodes of his life where people questioned his sanity, when he was actually profoundly troubled by pernicious goings on in the world around him ("People thought I was mad... Burn down Black Ark/Too much iniquity, too much outerquity was in the Ark/People thought I was crazy...walking backward in Spanish Town"). In sum, it recaps his incredible, visionary artistic legacy, which Perry continues to augment with records like Rainford: "I came up with the Ark, with salvation/And let the people dance/And give the people a chance/I am the Upsetter/Super Ape/Dub organizer, music striver/Pipecock Jackson/Lee Scratch Perry."

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Duff Review: Lee "Scratch" Perry "The Black Album"

Upsetter Records
CD/Double LP
2018

(Review by Steve Shafer)

On The Black Album, Lee "Scratch" Perry collaborates again with co-producer Daniel Boyle (who also recently worked with Max Romeo on his fantastic Horror Zone in Boyle's Black Ark-modeled Rolling Lion studio), since their initial foray--2014's Back on the Controls--garnered a Grammy nomination and great notices. As with that release, Boyle's and Perry's mission on The Black Album is to capture the sound and spirit of Perry's spectacular 1970's analog Black Ark productions (Upsetter keyboardist Robbie Lyn plays on many cuts here), which were exceptionally warm, organic, and had a vibrant immediacy, and featured otherworldly percussive and aural effects resulting from Perry's masterful, spur-of-moment inventive, and wildly unorthodox approach to music and studio production. And it will come as no surprise that they've accomplished all this again here on a terrific new set of roots reggae cuts and their excellent track-for-track dub versions.

According to the liner notes, during the recording of this album Perry referred to the sound as "black," which then needed "space, light, and darkness" to help give it form and definition--all of which implies that there's a necessary ying and yang type of harmony/balance for everything in creation (including the diversity of people). This point is perhaps best illustrated on the wonderful and most perfectly realized track on the album, "Your Shadow Is Black" (and accompanying dub!). It's a bright, mid-tempo reggae cut with flute, melodica, harmonizing back-up singers, and Perry singing/saying stream-of-consciousness lyrics (he even makes kissing sounds at an appropriate spot): "Whirlwind and fire/Dark shadow in the room/Love your shadow/Your shadow is black/Your shadow is mud/Your shadow is God..." The Old Testament reference to Sodom and Gomorrow (Gomorrah) and mention of an ominous dark shadow on the moon suggests that evil is amongst us always (as a contrast with the good and righteous), but also infers that there will be divine punishment for wicked doers (the Lot reference in "Your Shadow Is Black" made me look up Perry's work on The Congos' magnificent "Sodom and Gomorrow" to compare their productions and they're incredibly similar in sound and vision!).

The great, eerie album opener "Mr. Brown In Town" makes direct lyrical reference to the Glen Adams-penned Bob Marley and the Wailers song "Mr. Brown" (which versioned Jackie Mittoo's "Pennie Wallie" and was based on a rumor about a ghost "upsetting" everyone by riding around Kingston in a three-wheeled coffin with three crows riding on top asking for a Mr. Brown; Perry also sang about "Mr. Brown" on his 1998  "Dr. Lee PhD" collaboration with The Beastie Boys). Essentially, "Mr. Brown In Town" declares that Perry is back "on the street again," "I'm still alive/refuse to die," and asserts that rebels/devils in the poor, violent Back-o-Wall slum don't fear Mr. Brown (and at one point--message to the Resistance--when exhorting Mr. Brown the clown to get out of town, he inserts "Trump!" instead of Brown).

Other standout tracks include the (expected and) knowingly boastful/self-aggrandizing "Trendsetter" ("Lee Scratch Perry/Upsetting the universe") and "Captain Perry" ("...of the mothership/Captain Perry/Don't miss a trick")--and perhaps Scratch isn't a big fan of some forms of reggae (see: "Killing Dancehall Softly"). Perry mounts a more-than-credible defense of being a vegetarian on "Dead Meat": "666/Me no eat meat...I'm so crazy because I don't eat dead flesh...No cannibals/You gotta to believe in animals." (Just the other day, I saw a video of Perry singing to cows in a field...) I'm not completely sure of the message being conveyed on the amazingly upbeat "Solid State Communication" (Perry as the instrument of God's word?): "Genesis/Revelation/I'm the Bible/I'm black Jesus...I am the God of Creation/I am the Lord of the Lords/Solid as a rock/King of Kings/And Lord of Lords/Conquering Lion of Judah/Solid state logic communication/The Upsetter...I'm a computer!" Of course, few but Scratch can pull off something like this so spectacularly well.

At 83--in his sixth decade of continually making and producing groundbreaking music--Scratch continues to move forward, always creating and amazing all with the results. (May everyone be so fortunate in their own lives...) Needless to say, fans of Perry and roots reggae will be more than pleased with The Black Album.

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Duff Review: Max Romeo "Horror Zone"

Cover by Tony Wright, who created the album art for
"War Ina Babylon," Junior Murvin's "Police and Thieves,"
Lee Perry's "Super Ape," and Bob Marley and the Wailers'
"Natty Dread."

Nu Roots
2016
Heavyweight Double LP/CD

(Review by Steve Shafer)

There's really no need for Max Romeo's new album Horror Zone to be pitched as a (very long-overdue) sequel to his iconic 1976 collaboration with Lee "Scratch" Perry, War Ina Babylon, as this conscious, roots reggae record is astonishingly good in its own right. But since his post-Babylon falling out with Perry--and despite working in the years since with an array of name producers, like Jah Shaka, Tapper Zukie, Mafia and Fluxy, even Keith Richards--Romeo hasn't come close to matching the greatness of War Ina Babylon (or his extremely underrated 1975 album Revelation Time, also known as Open the Iron Gate, which I think even outshines Babylon). So, gently forgive the necessary marketing hype that is being employed to bring attention to an album genuinely deserving of it.

Romeo's key collaborator/secret weapon on Horror Zone is UK producer Daniel Boyle, who recreated Lee Perry's analog Black Ark studio set-up in his Rolling Lion studio for a series of recent albums he produced for Scratch (including the 2014 Grammy-nominated Back on the Controls) and uses it tremendously well for Romeo's recordings (so much so that they sound like warm and vital contemporaries of Revelation Time and War Ina Babylon). Occasionally, you catch familiar bits of Perry-like arrangements or percussive passages or sound effects (in the intro to "What is Life?" I hear The Congos "Fisherman")--but these are the contextual underpinnings (in a version-mad genre!) supporting terrific new tunes. Hatchet buried, Perry himself contributes percussion, backing vocals, and effects on many tracks and their dubs here, as do several members of Perry's band The Upsetters, including Vin Gordon on trombone, Robby Lyn on keys, and Glen DeCosta on sax.

Even though humanity more or less survived the seemingly apocalyptic late 70s, now forty years on--when man-made climate change has replaced nuclear war as the likely means of our self-destruction--Max Romeo (71 years old and in great vocal shape) still finds much to lament, as not much progress has been made. "What If" chillingly opens the album with these lyrics:

"What if I tell you that the world is in trouble
What would you say?
And what if I tell you that you will die tomorrow
What would you do today?

What if this was the start of the Armageddon?
Tell me, would you be prepared?
If all the things that said is true
Tell me what are we to do?

Said it's the system that sets it so
And don't you forget you know
What if the sun no longer shines
And there's darkness all the time?

Then all life on earth would perish
And all humanity would surely vanish
No more thunder and no more lightning
No more wind and no more rain

No more stealing, no more killing
No more stars that shined above
What if I tell you..."

And Romeo is just getting started. Horror Zone is packed with sharp, potent lyrics full of empathy for the downtrodden and oppressed, often delivered in wonderfully catchy and buoyant songs. He decries how badly those with power treat the less powerful--depriving them of basic needs and rights, or sending them off as cannon fodder for their wars--but also points out how we choose to act in wicked ways and how poorly we treat each other and ourselves (the myriad dangers of smoking tobacco cigarettes are defined--"I have a friend who has a daily pack/I tried to tell him that he should not/No matter what I say, he wouldn't stop/Now he's laying in a cemetery in a numbered spot"--as much of Rastafarianism is concerned with maintaining a healthy body).

Max Romeo--photo by Nick Caro

In this supposedly populist age (note the "mad as hell"/"Network" reference toward the end of the song!), Romeo has penned an anthem to rally the beat down/complacent people to band together for some sort of revolution to overthrow Babylon's/Western society's corrupt and greedy system--"Fed Up":

"Fed up, fed up
Can't take no more
I said we are fed up
Can't get no more

For too long we sat here
And taking all the crap
This cruel and unusual punishment
Certainly have to stop

We wake up every day
With the beat of the same old drum
Uninspired people sit
And waiting for the Lord to come

No hope of survival
No chance to rise
Wondering and thundering
Will our children survive
Under this wicked and brutal system
That Babylon provide

Time for us to get serious
And take it to the streets
Time for Babylon to understand
There's no surrender or retreat

It's either or either
We will do or we will die
Put your heads out your windows
Now with one big voice we cry

Yes, we are fed up..."

Much like Black Uhuru's song of the same name, Romeo's critique of Babylon continues in "What Is Life?"--particularly how our systems of government/economy purposefully deny vast numbers of people the basic things they need for a decent existence, restricting them to lives full of nothing but deprivation and misery.

"What is life?
Here today and gone tomorrow
What is life?
When you have to spend it all in sorrow
What is life?
When you have to live it out on a limb
What is life?
Without love, it don't mean a thing

Is this life?
The way we are forced to live
Is this life?
When we ain't have nothing to give
Is this life?
When you always live in wants
Is this life?
When poverty always haunts

Are you happy to see your children hungry?
And the house is always empty
And the bills are piling high
And the little children all are cryin'--'cause their tummies are empty
I said their tummies are empty

What is life?
When you have to scratch just like a chicken
What is life?
When there's no food left in the kitchen
What is life?
When there's no water in the main
What is life?
When you have to live it under strain"

Mournful violins introduce the tragically beautiful and evocative "The Sound of War." Listening to this track, you can almost see the biblical-looking Max Romeo on a bluff overlooking the valley below that is soon to become a combat zone, describing all he witnesses. With its references to wars waged to supposedly spread/protect freedom and democracy, one also can imagine this song is aimed at the United States' disastrous, Bush/Cheney-led imperialist occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan (and the disposability of its soldiers afterwards...).

"I hear the sound of war
Echoing over yonder
It make I man stop and wonder
I heard the sound of a bomb
That sound like thunder
The flashing like that looks like lighting
The rolling of the guns across the plains
And the children so confused
And the elders not amused

Is Babylon unleashing all its might?
Destroying everything in sight
I can feel the agony of the people
Cowering with fear
Destruction everywhere
When two governments disagree
The people get least
No one listen to their struggle
Whenever this is war the children perish
Losing everything they ever cherished

They send your sons and daughters to die
On the battlefield
All in the name of freedom
All in the name of democracy
Those that make it back
Is shown no mercy
Living in the streets like rat
Nowhere to rest their pack"

My favorite cut on the album is the joyous (despite the lyrical content) title track, "Horror Zone" (that has echoes of Willie Williams' "Armagideon Time"/Sound Dimension's "Real Rock" riddim within), which places a lot of the blame for our current mess on our own choices and for failing to follow a righteous path.

"Cloak and dagger
Skull and bones
Drifting in
The Horror Zone

We seem to forget the reason we're here
Why Jah has given us this earth to share
It's more than enough for us to take part
But for the glory of Jah we all have come short

We seem to focus on just violent tings
Destroying the fabric of humanity
We never stop for a moment to think if it's right
The terrible things we do in Jah Jah's sight

Men have conjured many concepts
Forgetting that Jah should be shown respect
They come up with little gimmicks that sound so real
But when you take up stock it's your soul they steal

Beware of false prophet, Jah has warned us
Not everything that glitters turn out to be gold
Sometime decision come back to haunt us
The words have been written and the story been told

Cloak and dagger
Skull and bones
Drifting in
The Twilight Zone
All that matters
Is left alone
Cause men bow down
To wood and stone"

The album proper finishes with a prayer of thanksgiving/warning to the unrepentant: "Give Thanks to Jehovah" (or else).

Horror Zone is accompanied by track-for-track dub versions (on a second LP in the vinyl version), all expertly crafted by Boyle (I really like "What is Dub?" in particular). Several feature Lee Perry on vocals and effects ("What If Version," "Horror Zone in Dub," and "Give Thanks Dub"), which take them to a whole new level of wonderful, otherworldly weirdness.

Somehow, all of the stars aligned for Max Romeo's phenomenal Horror Zone to come to fruition, so do all that you can to track down this (somewhat hard-to-find in physical form) album. You don't want to miss out--Horror Zone is likely destined to become a new roots reggae classic.

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