Lee “Scratch” Perry & the Upsetters: Rhythm Shower

Rhythm Shower is a bona fide signature Upsetters album, but it’s also an anomaly. Released in 1973, a tumultuous period in Lee “Scratch” Perry’s career, it was originally pressed in a tiny quantity and was subsequently overlooked for a decade. ’73 was the year Perry founded Black Ark studios and put together a new lineup of the Upsetters after the rhythm section of Carlton and Aston “Family Man” Barrett defected to the Wailers, but if the times were a little chaotic, that isn’t really reflected in the album. Perry initially released it on his own Upsetter label with no artwork, but his assured mastery of the studio, plus a typically warm period production with dub-like elements, meant it was always destined to find an audience. Yet the album’s relative obscurity is understandable; Perry and the Upsetters, not to mention their many collaborators and competitors, were churning out so much of this stuff in the early ‘70s that it was easy for rhythms, tracks, singles or even whole albums to be lost in the bustle of it all. Nevertheless, as the album amply illustrates, the quality of the work was as formidable as the quantity.

The shifting personnel of the Upsetters at the time makes it hard to know exactly who plays what and where, but the album prominently features high-profile guest stars alongside Perry and his band, notably Dillinger and legendary DJ Sir Lord Comic. The Black Ark studio was as much of a Frankenstein laboratory as a typical recording studio and was home to some of the most forward-looking, innovative production techniques of the time, showcased here alongside straightforward reggae tracks. Perry’s experimental approach is most notable on “Operation,” where the producer performs drastic surgery on The Stingers’ “Give Me Power,” The Ethiopians’ “Love and Respect” and Junior Byles’ “Fever” and by some mysterious alchemical process creates a new and individual song. But even the more conventional performances have the verve and gritty, soulful quality that makes the Jamaican music of the era so special.

The album opens with Dillinger’s “Tighten Up,” which has the same easy but joyous energy that marked Scratch and the Upsetters’ relatively recent albums like Eastwood Rides Again. Sir Lord Comic’s “Django Shoots First” is more experimental. At heart a lovely, jaunty near instrumental with Rocksteady-ish organ, probably Glen Adams or Winston Wright, it could almost come from the ‘60s if not for Sir Comic’s jovial, reverb-drenched vocal dropping in and out, a hint at the dub style then evolving. Still, more characteristic, disorienting dub effects come later in the album.

The Upsetters’ “Uncle Charley” is another light, poppy tune that could almost be from the band’s 1969 debut if not for its relatively looser feel and the far more radical treatment of the vocal sections, the same kind of experiments Perry undertook the same year on the seminal Upsetters 14 Dub Blackboard Jungle LP. Likewise, “Sokup,” a laidback, sleepy reggae track, becomes something spectral and haunting with the use of heavy reverb, its catchy organ melody buried in the mix as it certainly wouldn’t have been even a couple of years earlier. Dillinger’s “Skanking,” too, is in essence a pretty normal ska track, but his vocal is given so much reverb that it alters the mood of the song entirely. “Double Power” is even more advanced; pretty much a full-blown dub track, with the organ dropping out, unexpectedly dropping back in and echoing so much that the song almost falls apart, only held together by the solid rhythm.

On the great “Lover Version” the experiment is taken to almost absurd lengths, with parts of the vocal sounding disembodied, as if being phoned in from the studio next door, while others are close and immediate. And yet the end effect is catchy and soulful rather than offputtingly weird.

Rhythm Shower wears its many innovative aspects lightly. Sometimes, as on “Lover Version” and “Kuchy Skank,” it is genuinely odd; what would normally be the main vocal is barely audible, even in headphones – but it must have sounded even stranger in 1973. On “Kuchy Skank,” the bass and Augustus Pablo’s slinky melodica take precedence over everything else – but interestingly at this point almost all of the tracks, including this one, are still the standard two– three minutes long, so that even the most daring experiments fit comfortably within the catchy pop-song tradition. More conventional tracks, like the light, slight “Rumpelsteelkin,” with its chirpy tempo and ska-like brass, sit strangely alongside the more experimental tracks, but at the same time they help to cement the album together and give it its character.

The sense of the album as more than just a collection of tracks is strengthened by the exception to the concise, pop structures – the closing “Operation.” An epic seven minutes long, it’s the track that points towards the immediate future of dub and remains a stunning, if not polished example of Perry’s studio mastery. Compared to his later work, the edits from one track to another are sometimes more abrupt and less smooth than they would become. But the way the different elements are woven together, the tempos adjusted to give the song its own feel and flow, was an affirmation of the omnipotent role of “Director & Producer” the credit Perry gets on the original pressing’s label. Rhythm Shower isn’t necessarily the greatest album Scratch produced in this period, and it’s really only an essential purchase for Upsetters completists and those fascinated by the origins of dub. On the other hand, 50 years on, it still shines as an example of the everyday genius of Jamaican music of its era, a time when listeners could buy the latest releases from the major studios of the day with the confidence that they would hear something that felt as natural as breathing, but that they had never heard before. Recent vinyl reissues suffered from problems with pressings, but assuming that all is well this time around, this is an Upsetters gem that won’t disappoint.