Lee "Scratch" Perry - Later Career

Later Career

Perry now lives in Switzerland with his wife Mireille and two children. Although he celebrated his 70th birthday in 2006, he continues recording and performing to enthusiastic audiences in Europe and North America. In 2003, Perry won a Grammy for Best Reggae Album with the album Jamaican E.T.. In 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked Perry #100 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. More recently, he teamed up with a group of Swiss musicians and performed under the name Lee Perry and the White Belly Rats, and made a brief visit to the United States using the New York City-based group Dub Is A Weapon as his backing band. Currently there are two feature length movies made about his life and work: Volker Schaner's Vision Of Paradise and The Upsetter by filmmakers Ethan Higbee and Adam Bhala Lough.

After meeting Andrew W.K. at SXSW in 2006, Perry invited him to co-produce his album, Repentance. The album, released on 19 August 2008, on Narnack Records, features several guest artists including Moby, Ari Up of The Slits, producer Don Fleming, drummer Brian Chippendale of Lightning Bolt, bassist Josh Werner of Matisyahu, and porn star Sasha Grey.

In 2008, Perry reunited with producer Adrian Sherwood on an album called The Mighty Upsetter. Unlike the dancehall/pop oriented Repentance, The Mighty Upsetter returned to the dub/reggae styles for which Perry is known.

Between 2007 and 2010, Perry recorded three albums with British producer, Steve Marshall. Steve had been Lee's friend and apprentice since 1984, and the albums featured performances by Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, and the ubiquitous king of P-Funk, George Clinton. Two of these albums, End Of An American Dream (2008) and Revelation (2010), received Grammy nominations in the category Best Reggae Album.

In 2009, Perry collaborated with Vienna-based Dubblestandart on their Return from Planet Dub double album, revisiting some of his material from the 1970s and 1980s, as well as collaborating on new material with Dubblestandart, some of which also included Ari Up of The Slits. In 2008 leading up to this release, Perry's first foray into the dubstep genre was released on 12" vinyl, a collaboration with Dubblestandart and New York City's Subatomic Sound System called "Iron Devil". That record was followed by several more reggae oriented dubstep collaborations with Dubblestandart and Subatomic Sound System on digital and vinyl, first Blackboard Jungle Vols. 1 & 2 (2009), which featured dancehall vocalist Jahdan Blakkamoore and then Chrome Optimism (2010) which also featured American filmmaker David Lynch. Following that, in 2010, Scratch and Ari Up of The Slits on a limited edition Subatomic Sound System 7" called "Hello, Hell Is Very Low", a rootical dubstep tracks that would turn out to be one of Ari Up's last recordings and the final release during her lifetime.

In 2007, Perry's song "Enter the Dragon" was sampled on the track Carrots by Panda Bear of Animal Collective. As well, Perry was selected by Animal Collective in 2011 to perform at All Tomorrow's Parties, which the band curated in May 2011. In a subsequent interview, Brian Weitz of Animal Collective called his performance "phenomenal", saying that there "was very little evidence of his advanced age". That same year, he recorded Rise Again with bassist and producer Bill Laswell; the album features contributions from Tunde Adebimpe, Sly Dunbar, Bernie Worrell and more, and was released on Laswell's M.O.D. Technologies label.

In 2012, Perry teamed with electronic music group The Orb to produce a reggae-infused album entitled The Orbserver In The Star House, which was recorded in Berlin over a period of several months. The album has earned critical acclaim and features the single "Golden Clouds", named after the historic property located near Perry’s hometown in Jamaica.

In August 2012 it was announced that Perry would received Jamaica's sixth highest honour, the Order of Distinction, Commander class.