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The Upsetters was the real secret weapon of Perry, because early he recognized that good songs also have to do with solid music, especially if you want to technically alienate the arrangements.The genre "Dub" was probably invented by Lee, which brought him the appendage "Scratch" Perry. His specialty was to enrich sounds and musical passages with external equipment, sometimes several times with effects, called "overdubbing" in the jargon, which was very exotic at the time, especially since his style was very popular in the THC faction and still is! So Perry is also considered a pioneer of remixes and collaborations with DJs. Disco Devil as an 8 minute version was understood as an attempt to assert itself on the increasingly hip disco dance floors and accordingly to bring in some money next to the original by Max Romeo. Nowadays the techniques used for this purpose are used by many music producers, especially in the field of electronic music. By the way - Lee "Scratch" Perry lives in Switzerland these days and married Mireille, a dominant businesswoman who made headlines in the 80s. Lee Perry extroverted clothing style was already striking in the 70s and is even more so today!!! An aged bird of paradise, who must have seen many shades of color outside the "normal-perceptible" in his life, still acts very very youthful today. Lee Perry's creativity remains unbroken to this day. In 2003, he won the Grammy in the category of Best Reggae Album with his album Jamaican E. T..


Update: With the passing of Lee "Scratch" Perry in 2021, the music world lost one of its most colorful and creative pioneers. Despite his eccentric style, he was globally admired as a wizard of sound. Perry may be gone, but his influence will echo for generations. R.I.P. Lee "Scratch" Perry.

The South Bronx was originally an agricultural area, founded by the Dutch colony in the 17th century with the name of a Swedish farmer “Bronck”. Around 1900, many Italians, Irish, Jews and Germans lived in the Bronx and formed a middle class, but they increasingly left the borough after the World War, creating a working class and poor neighborhood, which unfortunately resulted in a lot of gang crime, car theft, drugs and robberies in the south. In 1977, the Bronx was in flames, causing around 40 percent of the buildings to burn down by 1980. Because homeowners could no longer sell their properties, they set them on fire in order to receive some compensation from the insurance companies. From 1990 onwards, crime fell massively and the Bronx is now known as the dormitory city for Manhattan, as there are only around 300,000 jobs for every 1.3 million inhabitants. The real estate industry quickly renamed the area SoBro and has been marketing it to established professionals and artists for some time now. Has gentrification now begun?

Their debut album “Settle” not only makes the third eye vibrate, it also gets the body moving. With hits such as Latch (feat. Sam Smith), White Noise and You & Me, they brought garage, house and UK bass to the big pop stage - with a fresh, danceable sound. Over the past 10 years, they have proven their versatility time and time again: Their second album Caracal(2015) brought international features with artists such as The Weeknd, Lorde and Miguel. 2020 then saw the release of Energy, an album that draws on influences from African music, hip-hop and soul - once again full of collaborative power and rhythmic finesse.

Filmmakers have learned from this to package content via the ear. At the center of this task is the sound designer/musician who forms a statement and thereby creates content in the film, from his point of view how the world sounds. So we start listening to the world as he sees it! Synthesizers have created new dimensions in this regard that cannot be done with conventional orchestra. A lot of attention is paid in this BBC doc to musician Vangelis, who finally talks about the "Blade Runner" soundtrack as well.

Update: Unfortunately, this doc is no longer on YouTube. Here is another movie about the first synths in history:

But the idea of composing music was of course already born back then! At the beginning of the 1960s, Peter Zinovieff came up with the idea of creating musically meaningful sequences - the sequencer was born. The man with a pocket calculator in his hand was thus only a conclusion from the fact that digital computers are more suitable for the task of playback than analog devices, which quickly reach their storage limits. In 1967, Zinovieff demonstrated an automatic composition with a self-designed computer in combination with an EMS synthesizer, which astounded the audience with a confusing succession of sounds. The history of the computer is therefore closely linked to music, because musical sequences that end automatically in a mini-program can only be handled efficiently by a computer. This documentary impressively shows the period from the early 60s to the early 70s. Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, Pink Floyd etc. ultimately only benefited from the creative power of the creators of that time!