The Quality of Mercy

Lee 'Scratch' Perry, Peter Harris & Fritz Catlin
Mercy
(Dash The Henge)

The legend that was Lee Scratch Perry may have departed to that great mixing desk in the sky over three years ago, but his voice not only lives on, it makes a starring appearance on an entirely new album - ‘Mercy’, thanks to the work of self styled "maverick artist and musical outlier" Peter Harris. Don’t worry, it’s not musical necromancy. Harris and Perry were close collaborators for more than 20 years, most notably on Harris’s film ‘Higher Powers’ and the art project 'The Higher Powers Bible '. Those collaborations morphed into further work together, resulting in vocal tracks for ‘Mercy’, recorded in 2015 and 2017.

Further vocals by Perry were drawn from his appearances on Harris’s monthly BOMBART radio show broadcast on the Palestinian radio station Radio Alhara in Jerusalem. That ‘Mercy’ is only now being released is testament to the amount of work that has gone into creating the right musical framework to showcase Perry's typically roguish patois vocals. It was a process that led to the involvement of the late Mark Stewart (The Pop Group) on whose recommendation Fritz Caitlin, drummer and co-founder of 23 Skidoo, was brought in for drum overdubs and other rhythmic anchorage and accorded joint credit. The finished album is very much the work of Harris, though, who instigated the project, and subsequently took seven years to add to, twiddle, and layer, with the final product mixed and co-produced by Catlin at his Shoretone Studio in Hastings.

But what of the music ? Well, not surprisingly given Lee Perry’s involvement, ‘Mercy’ is very much in the tradition of the best experimental dub. Obvious points of reference are 'My Life in the Bush of Ghosts', the ground breaking collaboration between Brian Eno and David Byrne, and 'Dub Syndicate's' classic 'Tunes from The Missing Channel', both of which ‘Mercy’ compares favourably with. Is it dub reggae though? There are some clear homages to Perry's early Jamaican recordings – lyrical and musical - and frequent reggaesque flashes, most enticingly on ‘This is Hell’ and ‘Devilish’. In fact it would be an injustice to describe 'Mercy' as merely dub reggae. It’s actually a whole lot more.

According to Harris: “I always saw Lee as a performance artist rather than a musician in the traditional sense, so this conceptual backing feels like a more accurate setting for his stream of conscious performance art.” Framed in that way, ‘Mercy’ makes perfect sense on both a musical and conceptual level. As with the two examples above it’s very a product of the studio. A chaotic mix, redolent with flourishes of other arch studio experimentalists - Eno as mentioned, Wire and even – dare I say it, 10CC – albeit the ground breaking studio tinkering of their early four man incarnation, not the lame pop duo responsible for the bloody awful faux reggae of ‘Dreadlock Holiday’. Put simply, this takes a canvas of well crafted throbbing rhythms and layers over them Perry's distinctive shamanic vocals, synth swirls, and guitar riffs, Harris's own vocal overdubs and a veritable panoply of disparate found sounds. Some of the melody lines are tantalisingly familiar. The album starts with a traditional sea shanty refrain on Whale: Fisherman, while the distinctive riff from Applebush (Alice Cooper / Josef K) makes an appearance on ‘Promised Land’. The lyrics too – elliptical and often indistinct are fuelled by a familiar combination of existentialist and political dread, little seen since the dark days of the 1980s. It’s a heady brew. Chaotic, but never overwhelmingly so, and most definitely never dull. After a week on repeat play I’m still noticing things that passed me by on previous listens. There’s just so much in there to like.

Is it too early to name an album of the year? This will take some beating.