There’s no way to prepare for novelty. The pandemic changed my perception in a profound way - a paradigm shift. The world felt suddenly further away and closer at the same time. News showed countries across the globe sharing our same experiences; we were united in the same fight. And yet we had to stay away from each other in order to be of most use. That’s a mindbender.
SuperSPREADER knew that we were going to need an escape from the tedium of isolation, from the mundanity, from the disconnection. It knew that time was going to stretch and warp and that we would need new reference points to anchor ourselves to any sense of normality. It knew that building something would help us cope.
But we had time on our hands, lots of it (if we weren't medical heroes or frontline saints or shackled to dishonest managers), and so the mind gets to working. And if music is how you connect with others best, and you can’t connect in person, could you connect in another way?
SuperSPREADER proposed laying down a length of groove - an expansive meditation for losing yourself and finding yourself - and advised me to put it out for fattening in the digital pastures. It called out, inviting distant souls to connect with it. It wanted to be spread amongst us, to swim within us, to affect each new host and be born again, a new strain. It was animated and eager for new leases of life.
As a way to reach out I created a musical message in a bottle; a 20+ minute fuzz-guitar psych-rock invitation to jam with me in a virtual space. Lockdown itself shared obvious parallels with this chosen psych-rock genre - the shifting perception of time, the scope to feel unanchored and drifting, the way the familiar would take on new meanings; the two were a perfect combination. Vaguely composed into three sections, this jam was recorded in a single take on the 30th of May 2020 in my impromptu home studio.
SuperSPREADER is 14 musicians responding to my original jam in their relative isolations. Nobody heard what anyone else had produced until I mixed them all together over a period of months in the autumn.
The result is beyond anything I could have ever expected; something transcendental happened as each musician locked into a higher consciousness and jammed with each other outside of time and space. It's some psychedelic shit! Enjoy.
credits
released December 16, 2020
In order of appearance:
Cathy McCabe - Violin
Tim Cresswell - Keys
Chris Bailey - Kitchenalia
Tom Richardson - Guitar, Synth Mellotron, Field Recordings
Melaine Le Bars - Coughs
Pete F Davies - Vox (and collage cover art)
Tim Langsford - Drums
Patrick James Pearson - Bass, Drums
Shane McKenna - Guitar, Slide Guitar, Banjo, Clarinet, Vox, Trumpet, Strings
Peter Miles - Drums, Bass
Arun Sood - Guitar
Shayne House - Synth
Ian Munro - Synth Bass, Pads, Beats
Cameron Black - Drums
Mixed by Tom Richardson at home during Lockdown 1, 2020
Mastered by James Bragg Recording, 2020
Psychedelic samples and narrative-driven wordplay dominate the UK rapper’s debut, featuring turns by Sleaford Mods, Kool Keith, and more. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 31, 2022
