ALBUM REVIEW: New Age Doom and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry – Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s Guide to the Universe
By Resonate | November 13, 2021
WORDS BY: LEE SAUNDERS
In his 1997 book The Accidental Evolution of Rock and Roll, critic Chuck Eddy argued that there is such a thing as ‘dub metal’ – not, he writes, in the sense of an actual scene, but a decades-long continuum of seemingly unrelated music that all negotiate conference between metallic heaviness and dubwise space and echo. With Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s Guide to the Universe, a new collaboration between the late, titular dub pioneer, and the aptly-named drone scientists New Age Doom, comes a new entry into the pantheon.
While the team-up may call to mind Sunn O))) working with musical sui generis like Julian Cope and Scott Walker, New Age Doom’s approach is to instead conjure heavy mass without fully committing to noise aesthetics, the resulting leeway being where Perry moves in. He contributes overdubbed mantras, asking us to “be faithful, be pure”. As Perry’s first posthumous release, it is disarming and poignant how he comes across like an unseen supreme being, booming confidently through the fog of the music, turning the thick sky into dub-spaces of secondary colours.
New Age Doom, who are responsible for the smoggy, droning music, hint at dub, free jazz, funk and rock without aligning perfectly with any of them. This results in a dark psychedelic tapestry that, at its best, evokes the unmoored canyons of A.R. Kane’s pioneering 69. Tracks like Fly in the Wind and Conquer the Sin dazzle as they intensify rhythmically before subsiding into pools of indeterminate feedback. It all makes Guide to the Universe an unpredictable listen. But then, centred on a genius like Perry, that’s only a fitting enough tribute for him.
7/10