The Black Ark was the recording studio of reggae and dub producer Lee "Scratch" Perry, built in 1973 and located behind his family's home in the Washington Gardens neighborhood of Kingston, Jamaica.
[1][2] Despite the rudimentary set-up and dated equipment,[3] it was nonetheless the breeding ground for some of Jamaica's most innovative sounds and recording techniques in the latter half of the 1970s.
From a technological standpoint, the Black Ark was at the low end in comparison to the international music recording standards of its day.
[2] The studio's legendary reputation stems from the innovative production techniques employed by Perry to create sounds that baffled his contemporaries, and which have continued to be a source of amazement to later generations of music producers.
[6] Many of his songs are layered with a variety of subtle effects created from broken glass, ghastly sighs and screeches, crying babies, falling rain and cow noises.
In 1979, following years of increasingly bizarre and erratic behavior, Lee "Scratch" Perry, armed with a magic marker, covered every available surface of the Black Ark with impenetrable writings before allegedly burning it to the ground.
However, it has been related by several Perry family members that the studio in fact caught fire in 1983 after an ill-fated attempt to rebuild it, the result of an electrical accident.