Almost every track on the charts today owes some part of its existence to the maniacal mind of Lee “Scratch” Perry. 

Born in Kendal, Jamaica in 1936, Lee “Scratch” cut his teeth in early studio sessions with soundsystem legend Coxone Dodd before founding his own Black Ark studio in the 1970s, going on to shape foundational reggae tracks from Bob Marley and the Wailers, The Congos and more. In his own releases with The Upsetters in the late 60s, meanwhile, Lee “Scratch” pioneered Jamaica’s spiritual, bass-heavy dub sound and, crucially, implemented the first recorded use of a music sample – a baby crying on 1968 single “People Funny Boy” – inadvertently cementing him as the godfather of almost all electronic music today. 

It’s this visionary approach to music production that forms the focus of new retrospective photobook Black Ark, which comprises never-before-seen images of Lee “Scratch”’s legendary recording studio. Over his lengthy career, which spanned right up to his death in 2021, Lee “Scratch” made frequent allusions to an unseen world of spirits and visual references in his recordings and artwork, and these artefacts place prominently in the book.

Almost entirely composed of shots taken during a visual inventory of the studio in the months leading up to Perry’s death, Black Ark reveals a rich inner world of abstract graffiti paintings on studio walls, cryptic references to the occult Seals of King Solomon, and recording equipment virtually mummified in stickers and rust. With the studio’s premises now sold, these images taken by Marc Asekhame are the final record of this legacy. 

“My first encounter with Lee was seeing him live as part of a concert by Lil B in Zurich in 2012, he brought out Lee for the last few tracks,” says Asekhame, referencing the unlikely entry point of enigmatic Californian cloud rapper Lil B. “I realised [Perry] lived in Zurich. Later in 2019, I photographed him at his studio in Einsieden, a suburban part of Zurich, where he would build another version of the Black Ark that he called Blue Ark.”

The book launched last night (March 25) at Cafe OTO in Dalston, London, alongside a panel featuring rising British designer Martine Rose, Perry’s biographer David Katz, Asekhame and more. “It took me several years to really comprehend that Scratch lived in this universe where everything was preordained, so nothing was accidental,” announced Katz during one poignant moment in the discussion. “‘No accidents’ was painted on the wall in the Blue Ark, and that is it. Everything happened for a reason, he was there to understand what their purpose was in his universe.”

Catch a closer look at the maniacal world of Lee “Scratch” Perry in the gallery above, and follow this link to preorder a copy of the book.