Lee “Scratch” Perry and various – Arkology

I feel I ought to know this music inside out, but I am only vaguely familiar with it. I tended to tune out a bit mentally when John Peel played dub, not because I didn’t like it, but because listening to it didn’t seem to take much effort, and by extension I got the impression that creating it didn’t take much effort either. I now see that that is totally wrong, and I can see, at least sometimes, the great subtlety of a lot of these pieces. This is wonderful music – the peak probably being Junior Murvin’s “Police And Thieves”, whose almost sublime beauty makes The Clash’s cover (much as I revere them and much as they obviously revered the original) sound clunky and loutish.

I must confess my attention started to wander during disks 2 and 3 (apart from “Police And Thieves” and “Roots Train” (Junior Murvin again, with Dillinger)), but it came back in a big way for the last two tracks, the Congos’ blissful “Feast Of The Passover” and Perry’s “Roast Fish And Cornbread” (weird weird weird but wonderful wonderful wonderful).

Listening to dub for three weeks on end, if only at a rate of 15 minutes or so a day (this is a 3-disk set), with a Friday afternoon off, is a bit much, though, a bit like (I imagine) smoking a Camberwell Carrot, or (I recall) eating a whole Sainsburys family size Black Forest gateau alone on a Sunday afternoon. I am going to give it a rest now.