Album: Lee 'Scratch' Perry, Disco Devil - The Jamaican Discomixes (Trojan)

Legend and fallible memory suggest that the extended 12-inch mixes from Perry's Black Ark studio are the holy grail of late-1970s reggae.

Well, up to a point. As this collection shows, a mix was generally only as good as the song it based itself on, and bunging in a bit of instrumental dub to enlarge the length could be frustratingly primitive. But when the method excels, it's great. Buy George Faith's To Be a Lover to see how Scratch could give a whole album the integrity of Pet Sounds.