Lee "Scratch" Perry & Dub Syndicate - Time Boom X De Devil Dead

When I was a lot younger, every weekend I was in a record shop in Manchester called Yanks. A basement wonderland where you could find things released "over there" that had not made it to European distribution levels. Notably, there were two rows to the left when you came in that had loads of reggae and dub vinyl. Jamaican artists at the time were exploited massively and their work was reprinted at will by the West Coast diaspora who set up labels to release loads of things at low cost (as nothing went to the original artist, or label for that matter). That was the place that introduced me to so many artists, most notably the world of Augustus Pablo.

At that point, Rainford Hugh Perry was unknown to me. Then "Sounds" (the greatest music paper to have ever existed ... I had a massive archive of those stacked up and then it turned out that cats are not that interested in archives and see the world as various degrees of scratching post, seriously, who knew?) told me about the resurrection of Scratch following the hiatus after he burnt down his own LEGENDARY Black Ark studio.

It was an LP released on On-U Sound in 1987. I knew the label as I had started getting into Tackhead but fuck me I had no idea how deep the label and Mr Sherwood went! I remember everything about my first encounter with this record ... from getting up in the morning, making sure I had enough money on me, getting the bus into Manchester, buying it from Piccadilly Records (when it was in in the unironically named Piccadilly Plaza), the bus journey back and the needle dropping. Just one of those total life changers ...

I think that life should be a celebration of this music ...

This is the lossless rip of the 1994 CD reissue from 1994 that has some additional tracks.

Hey Gringo