Jamaican E.T.

Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry is an increasingly frequent visitor to these shores to perform live, star in Guinness ads and freak the living daylights out of hapless hacks like myself.

Given his long-standing reputation a level of sheer insanity that ranks alongside Brian Wilson, Syd Barrett and Arthur Lee in the great musical freaks hall of fame, it’s a shame that his consistently excellent music is frequently overlooked and sorely under-rated.

Jamaican E.T. is easily as good as contemporary roots reggae gets. A very fine basic ensemble backs the Upsetter with some added vocal flourishes from The Naylor Twins on four of the best tracks. As Perry is undoubtedly the world’s best ever reggae producer with over 1,000 releases and projects from Bob Marley to the Beastie Boys to back this claim, it is not too surprising that Jamaican E.T. sounds impeccable.

It would take far more than this space to summarise the warped lyrical content of this album, but let’s just say that the song titles ‘Jah Rastafari, Jungle Safari’, ‘Holyness, Righteousness, Light’ and ‘Evil Brain Rejector’ should give you at least a flavour. ‘Scratch’ is still totally off his rocker after all these years and sounding all the better for it. Most living legends simply aren’t supposed to sound this good anymore.