It's out! You can listen to it on Spotify - CLICK HERE. You can also listen on Apple music.
We made a short video trailer for it, have a look.
As an artist, a musician and a human being, I always want everything I do to be the best it can possibly be, I also balance that by the need to inject passion and feeling into my work. As a musician, I realised many yeaars ago that if you seek absolute perfection, you never finish anything. You also remove all of the energy and excitement from the music. The best example of this is if you listen to the first two albums by The Clash back to back. The first is badly produced, badly arranged and absolutely brilliant. The second was brilliantly produced by top US producer Sandy Pearlman, but completely lacking in the raw energy that made us all love the first album.
There are many parts of the modern recording process that I believe knocks the guts out of music. I say that as studio owner. If you are making dance music etc, then it is different, but I believe Rock and Roll, Reggae, Ska, Punk etc should maintain a degree of rawness and always be on the edge. You cannot be scared of failure and you cannot moderate what you have to say to fit someonelses pidgeon hole.
The False Dots last Album "Don't be afriad of a finger in the Sun" was at the time our best work. I am really proud of it, but it was very much a transitional album. Our trumpet player Tom Hammond only played on one track and had little input into the process. Tom's fingerprints are all over this, and it is a thousand times better for this collaboration. I talked about all of the song in our countdown, apart from the last one, Traitors. The album starts as upbeat and fun and as it goes on gets darker and more experimental. I have always believed an album takes you on a journey.
When I put the album together, I mentally wanted a journey. The album starts in a rather triumphal and fun way. We lay down our views in the first track, start introducing characters from the bands history in the second track, the third track see us start to get involved in the seedy world of Rock and Roll, but very much as innocents. Track four sees us starting to become cynical, as the scales drop from our eyes as to the nature of our modern capitalist society. Track five sees us our addictions changing as we grow older, with junk food replacing harder, more addictive things. Track six is a story our drummer Graham Rambo Ramsey told us about how he discovered Mod culture, and stopped watching TV sitcoms. It is written from the perspective of someone looking back on a long lost misspent youth.
Track seven is back to the current. It is a sharp look at urban regeneration and how it is done by people who have no interest in the quality of life of the people who live in the the developments. The sense disenchartment with the way things have developed is more pronounced, but we have an upbeat ska soundtrack, that is saying "music gets us through". Track eight is our celebration of Non League Football and the fans that have grown ever more alienated from "Big football culture". For myself and most of my friends. There is a line, credit to our former vocalist Allen Ashley "Saturday gets us through, on the green red against blue". This is true. For many of us, Football and music keep us sane.
Track nine is probably our most fun track. Big Hairy spider is pure silliness. A very personal song about when a teenage crush collides with reading too many horror comics and eating too much cheese late at night. It marks a pivot on the album from fun to more dark subject matter.
Track ten, Pusherman, is where the chickens come home to roost. In the mythology of Vampires, you have to invite them in. In the real world, I see the nearest thing to a Vampire to be unscrupulous drug pushers. There are plenty of references in our songs to casual drug use. This is where the chickens come home to roost and you find that you've got Satan sitting on your couch, canoodling with your girlfriend and you are too out of it to care. I've often thought that it would be great to go around and get hardocre dealers to tell their worst stories. This would be more effective than just saying no.
Track eleven is our blast at people who are unable to accept truth and facts. It as written in 1979, but could have been written yesterday.
And finally. I didn't preview this track in the coutdown - Traitors - I can recall that when Margaret Thatcher was deposed, I saw a Mill Hill Tory stalwart on the train home. He was almost in tears. He bitterly said to me "All political careers ultimately end in betrayal and tears". Traitors - The middle 8 was written in 1568, by an ancestor of mine, Chidiok Tichborne, as he awaited execution in the Tower of London, for being part of a plot to assassinate Queen Elisabeth I. I always felt he was a kindred spirit, although I've never really been tempted to assinated anyone. But it is the logical end of the journey. Life has all sorts of moments, but we all eventually come to face our Tower, betrayed, let down, failed. It is musically very different. It has a programmed drum beat. Rambo put some mad cymbals on after, to make it feel organic. Artistically, the thing I like most is the free form Jazz trumpet riffs at the end. It sounds to me like the soul has been freed of the worries of life and is just floating in the ether.
The album was excellently produced by Boz Boorer, a legend and a good mate. Is it any good? I'll leave that up to you to decide. As fr as I am concerned, it has ticked all of the boxes I wanted. Please join us for the Album Launch Party at the Dublin Castle on 23rd August at the Dublin Castle
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