Subatomic Sound System

“Scratch’s best work since he burned down the Black Ark nearly 40 years ago”  – Wax Poetics Magazine

41 years later… Super Ape Returns to Conquer!  Lee “Scratch” Perry & Subatomic Sound System team up to re-imagine Perry’s classic, genre defining Jamaican dub album, musically elaborated and reloaded for the new millennium. Specially designed for  interplanetary travel by the bass obsessed, sound system generation. SubPac optimized. [ Out now on DL/ CD/ Vinyl LP ]  Debuted #2 on iTunes, #5 on Billboard, #1 on NACC radio North America, #1 on Juno, #2 on Beatport reggae chart. Top 5 albums of 2017 in Large Up and United Reggae.

Oct 24 – Nov 5, 2017 + Jan 14-28, 2018, Scratch & Subatomic tour across North America perform the new album and more. Check the show review from Victoria and Los Angeles . Check the Beats1 radio Apple Music interview with Scratch & Emch, described by Hot97 host Ebro as an interview with “the most important person in music culture of the past 60 years“.

Get it now off iTunes or stream on Apple Music or Spotify.  DJs check Beatport , Juno , ReggaeRecord , or BandCamp (bonus track) for hi-rez audio.  Order CD or vinyl LP from Amazon, Juno in the UK, or direct from US distro online now.  Full album released 9/22 on digital, CD (includes bonus track) and vinyl (alternate mixes and masters).  CD and vinyl both are packed with art and a foldout 10″ poster of the phenomenal cover illustration by New Analog Design.

“A classic album for a new generation of dub fans…It’s a bold move to try and improve a masterpiece, but the result is stunning. Super Ape Returns To Conquer is true to the original sound with its dense and steamy tropical sonic landscape. But at the same time it has more punch thanks to influences from electronic music, dubstep and hip-hop. It has superb horns and pounding percussion along with booming bass, blasting beats and blazing energy” – United Reggae

“Super Ape is, arguably, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s dub masterpiece” – Large Up

“Perry’s abstract dub Super Ape is digitally revisited and energised with enhanced Ethiopian horns and percussion, wider and deeper bass chasms and crisper, shinier beats” – WIRE magazine “

Lee  ‘Scratch’ Perry unveiled a mesmerizing remake of “Zion’s Blood” from his upcoming reworking of the Upsetters’ 1976 classic, ‘Super Ape.’…[which] manages to deepen the song’s groove through juiced drums, rich horns, slender guitar and the occasional synth wobble. Perry’s vocals have an older, wizened grit as well, and his voice sifts hypnotically through the dense sonic milieu… Scratch co-produced Super Ape Returns to Conquer with Subatomic Sound co-founder Emch. The pair recorded the LP at Subatomic Sound Studios in Brooklyn and Scratch’s home studio, the New Ark, in Jamaica” – Rolling Stone Magazine

“The sonic experimentations conducted by legendary Jamaican producer Lee “Scratch” Perry in the 1970s in his fabled Black Ark studio were so advanced, they continue to influence 21st century electronic music strains and recording techniques” – Billboard Magazine 

“‘Super Ape Returns to Conquer’ perhaps is best described as a brilliant companion piece to an album that still today is considered to be one of the highest achievements in the genre. Neither renders the other any less effective and, if anything, furthers the myths and majesty of Perry” – Reggaeville

“Subatomic pays homage to the dub motherlode, recreating the album from start to finish, but in a thoroughly postmodern rendition that repositions the material for a contemporary audience that may not be familiar with the original… [Read more…]