By Erik Morse

"It was only four tracks on the machine, but I was picking up 20 from the extra terrestrial squad...”

Reggae producer and dub pioneer Rainford Hugh Perry, a.k.a., Lee Perry, a.k.a. Scratch, a.k.a. the Upsetter, has a professional career that now stretches over half a century with thousands of studio tracks, production and songwriting credits. From Studio One to Amalgamated Records to his own Black Ark studio and label, Perry is second only to Bob Marley for his contribution to the worldwide popularity Jamaican music.

His list of compatriots reads like a Rosetta stone of Rastafarian music – Max Romeo, the Congos, King Tubby, and Augustus Pablo. His genre-bending work in ska, rocksteady, reggae, and dub has earned him the distinctive sobriquet of mad genius. But three generations of experimental artists - born under the sign of “I Am the Upsetter” and “Long Shot” - have since taken up the echo plate, leaving Perry a largely mythic and removed patrician of all-things woozy. At 72, Perry maintains a life of sobriety, with a Grammy to his credit and a permanent residence in Zurich. The Upsetter of late is far from the raving producer who once burned down his own backyard studio in a fit of rage.

Perry’s latest, the new Repentance (Narnack), is, like many of the Upsetter’s most exciting records, an ensemble effort, with a cast that includes recent collaborator Andrew WK – who takes over the number two position once held by the Mad Professor – along with Moby and Lightning Bolt. Reportedly a marriage of Perry’s classically opaque Babylon lyricism with a thoroughly modern sampladelic production courtesy of WK, Repentance will likely leave dub connoisseurs satisfied and all other neophytes bemused, if not slack-jawed.

Come see if Scratch has any more tricks up his sleeve!

Lee 'Scratch' Perry
With Heavyweight Dub Champion
Thurs/28-Fri/29, 9 p.m., $25
Independent
628 Divisadero, SF
(415) 771-1421