Chris Watson interview: “Somewhere in Buckingham Palace is the entire works of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry”

Chris Watson listens for a living. As the BAFTA award-winning sound recordist on TV wildlife programmes such as David Attenborough’s Frozen Planet and Life series, he’s chronicled the soundscapes of the most incredible, as well as the most dangerous, places on Earth. From filming chimpanzees frolicking in the Congo, to inserting microphones in the rib cages of dead zebras on the Masai Mara so he can record the sound of vultures tearing their carcasses apart, Chris Watson has done, and heard, it all.

Back in the 1970s and 80s Watson was a founding member of the Sheffield-based experimental music group Cabaret Voltaire. Inspired by early musique concrète composers from the Arab world, such as Halim Abdul Messieh El-Dabh, and Western ones like Frenchman Pierre Schaeffer, Watson manipulated electronic sounds on tape loops, as well as playing the keyboard. He still releases his own albums on the Touch label and in 2013 was the recipient of the prestigious Paul Hamlyn Composers Award. Now living on the outskirts of Newcastle with his wife Maggie, his work, both as recordist and musician, often features on BBC Radio Three, Radio Four and the World Service.

Pyramid scheme: Chris Watson at Giza

The gift of a tape recorder one Christmas in his early teens sparked Watson’s passion for documenting sound. But, he tells me, it was Channel Four’s groundbreaking 80s music show, The Tube, that gave him one of his first career breaks as well as an enduring love of reggae. “I came up to Newcastle to work at Tyne Tees television in the sound department. They had great opportunities for training and it was a really good place to learn the art and craft of recording, production and mixing. I was assistant sound recordist on The Tube and got sent out to Jamaica to record [reggae singer, composer and producer] Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry in his studios. Also to Compass Point in Nassau [the recording studios founded by Chris Blackwell, the owner of Island Records] to record people like John Martyn and Robert Palmer. It was great, amazing actually. We hung out in the ruins of Lee Perry’s Black Ark studios. He had this wonderful 24-track studio but just set fire to it one day because he believed it had become inhabited by evil spirits. It was a wreck. There were these Ampex 24-track recorders that were just burnt out shells. It was bizarre. He had to move to Compass Point after that to do his recording.”

“Lee was fascinated by power and would carry PP3 batteries in his pocket because he believed he could absorb energy from them. He would also collect stones on the beach which were hot from the sun and take them back to Compass Point so he could soak up the power from them as he worked. But by night — which was the only time Lee worked — the stones had cooled down. So he put them in an electric oven in his apartment next door and whacked the heat right up to 11 to heat the rocks back up — the idea being that their power would return so he could harness it. But he put the rocks in the oven and forgot about them. After three or four days there was a massive explosion as these rocks shattered and blew apart. Luckily he wasn’t in or it would have killed him, but it took his apartment right out! Chris Blackwell sent him straight back to Jamaica after that.” Watson adds, “Lee was an amazing character though. He told me that he used to send a copy of every one of his albums to the Queen because he believed she was the only person who could free the people of Jamaica. So somewhere in Buckingham Palace is a collection of the entire works of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry.”

Despite travelling extensively for his job, putting together a tracklist of his favourite world music is not as easy for Watson as you might expect. “Because of the remoteness of the places I visit, the musicians I meet there aren’t making records. For them, music is not performance, it’s just part of the rhythm of their daily lives.”

Watson is captivated by sounds that embody and convey the spirit of a place. One artist he has worked with who nurtures the relationship between music and environment is Laura Cannell, whose track ‘Näcken’ can be heard below. “This particular one came from an album that I worked on with her in October last year. Laura is affected and influenced, as I am, by landscape and the spirit of place. Not spirit in a religious sense, but I’m convinced that there’s definitely some kind of spirit to a landscape and that it has a sound.”

He also tells me about Ánde Somby, a joik artist who is a Sámi (the indigenous Finno-Ugric speaking people of Sápmi, which encompasses northern parts of Norway, Finland, Sweden and Russia). “Ánde invited me about five years ago to where he was living in Kvalnes, one of the Lofoten Islands in Norway, above the Arctic Circle,” he says. “Although he’s a Norwegian citizen and a professor of law at Tromsø University, he’s first and foremost a Sámi whose culture is transnational.”

“Joiking is deeply ingrained in Sámi culture and it’s the oldest vocal tradition in Europe. It’s not a form of entertainment. It’s a means of communicating with your ancestors. The Sámi believe that their ancestors reside within the landscape. And that’s something which resonates very powerfully with me. They believe that when you pass away, your spirit passes into the landscape and you become part of it. Joiking is one means of communicating with your ancestors.”

Watson discovered from Somby that the Norwegian government, who have exploited and abused the Sámi over the centuries, had issued a licence to a company to explore for deep mine coal in traditional Sámi reindeer herding lands. “So, realising that these traditional reindeer herding territories, where his ancestors reside, are going to be exploited for coal, Ánde created a joik to tell his ancestors: ‘We know this is happening and we’re going to do something about it’.” 

Somby got in touch with Watson, asking him to come and record him doing this joik on a mountainside in Kvalnes. “He went to one side of this lake, right on the tree line, and stood about 200m away from me and performed this joik. The echo came back to us a second or so later, slightly modified, as it bounced off the mountain. But the Sámi believe that it’s not an echo, it’s actually the sound of your ancestors responding. The sound of the spirits of the landscape.”

This interview originally appeared in the November 2022 issue of Songlines. Never miss an issue – subscribe today