The album fuses reggae with styles such as rock, R&B, calypso, soca, disco, boogie-woogie and jazz, with Bovell providing mixing, production and most of the instrumentation.

By the late 1970s, guitarist Dennis Bovell had become one of the major figures on the London reggae scene, most prominently with the band Matumbi, who he had co-founded in the middle of the decade.

We'd get punks or students, so I did a rock'n'roll version of 'After Tonight', then there was the Nigerian crowd, who went for the Afro soul beat of tunes like 'Aqua Dub', or there were a lot of calypso fans so I put 'Bertie' on there for them – I played drums on that track."

Feeling that his playing had become too self-styled, Bovell wanted "to be flexible, so that we can jump into a reggae number and then a jazz tune and then pop and then blues", and conceived Brain Damage in this fashion, intending the album to bring audiences of the disparate genres together.

[3] Further influencing the album was "all sorts of people" appearing at his shows ensuring him that "there was scope to try things out", which he reflected by re-recording Matumbi's "After Tonight" in a rock style for his punk and student fans, appeasing his Nigerian followers with the Afro-soul-styled "Aqua Dub" and wanting to give his original reggae fans "something extra by putting a bit of a twist on them" with more straightforward reggae tracks "Ehying" and "Bettah".

[3] In addition to writing the material and singing, he played the majority of the album's instruments, including guitar, bass, drums, viola and keyboards, and produced and mixed the record.

[5][6] Further contributors throughout the album include guitarist John Kpiaye, trumpeter Eddie Thornton, trombonist Rico Rodriguez and saxophonists Laura Logic and Steve Gregory.

He credited this mentality as having originated when experimenting with dub and reggae in a myriad of areas with John Kpiaye and Aswad's Tony Gad and Drummie Zeb when working on projects like the soundtrack to the film Babylon (1980).

[3] "Heaven" is shimmering disco-funk song[14] which Bovell wrote to fuse different black music, explaining: "it one minute has an African rhythm, and then it moves to an American tune, and it keeps going in between the two.

"[4] According to Bradley, since the material "was far more about the tunes and the instrumentation than the studio effects or the technology," the album's accompanying tour was able to take advantage of making audiences wonder which styles Bovell and his band would tackle with each track.

[16] Reviewing the record for Harrow Midweek, Mike Hrano wrote that Bovell "copes triumphantly with any music he chooses to dabble in", highlighting how the genre explorations cover "the whole gambit", and commented how the album still revealed new "treasures and secrets" on repeated listens.

[11] Less favourable was Brian Altken of the Aberdeen Evening Express, who said that while Bovell is a good session musician for other artists, the album "suggests that this is where he should stay", with the dub disc making "the tedium last longer".