Higher Authorities - Inflight Entertainment
Inflight Entertainment: A Cosmic Journey Into The Unknown
Listen to Higher Authorities:
http://smarturl.it/HigherAuthoritiesSP
Higher Authorities - Neptune album
Preorder at iTunes here: http://smarturl.it/NeptuneDL
Preorder at Domino here: http://smarturl.it/NeptuneDM
Neptune is a different expression of the fruitful musical partnership between a duo from a beloved cult band that have been at the forefront of continuing the UK’s rich psychedelic tradition for almost two decades. So who or what are the Higher Authorities? It’s partly a tongue in cheek reaction to scaremongering from the conspiracy theorists that would have you believe there's a sinister organisation controlling the world (“we’re obviously not the higher authorities”), but also inspired by “the idea of doing something daft. Everything in music now seems so regimented. Everyone takes a careerist approach to it, but a lot of the music we love was made when people were out of their heads."
The release date – 4/20, a day of huge significance in cannabis culture – is no coincidence. This is proper head music, an old-fashioned headphones album where the devil is in the lo-fi details. Neptune is a dense, disorientating sonic stew; a warped psychedelic dub album augmented by the mad box of sound effects that the legendary dub producer Adrian Sherwood, who mixed the record alongside the duo, brings to proceedings. Taut grooves are tapped out on battered old drum machines, ancient synths wheeze and drone alongside insidious keyboard lines, squelchy, fluid funk riffs and distorted guitars.
"Although songs might be based around just one riff or rhythm, things are changing every few bars. It's constantly evolving, with lots of even odder effects coming in. We recorded it ourselves in a small home studio set up – really cheap – then took it to Adrian. He likes to do it old style, mixing it while you're there. Between the three of us we mixed the whole album, but in between each mix Adrian would do dub mixes of every track. Some of that is even weirder.”
As well as dub, the key musical influences for Neptune were funk and disco. “The grooves are more obvious than in our other band. We were inspired by tacky 1970s disco – chart acts like Boney M and Odyssey. And then things like Jean Pierre Massiera, The Invaders and Cabaret Voltaire. But the echo side of it came from the third volume of Pebbles – it's the most out-there edition, with cheapo guitar pedals and that really amateur use of echo and effects where it's really over the top.”
The spoken word elements nod to The Telly Savalas and the poet Adrian Henri (founder of poetry rock group The Liverpool Scene, whose first album was produced by John Peel) and lyrics from the Captain Beefheart school of thought, where the meaning is neither totally cryptic nor utterly profound. Rather than a detailed imitation of reality, they seem to depict real and unreal worlds held together in a precarious balance.
“A lot of the lyrics are critical of the way that everyone wants to be successful – aspirational. It's quite cutting, but it's also trying to have a laugh in the face of that. It's about not just lying down and taking it. There's a defiant side to it as well. There’s not any particular meaning or narrative. It's about certain phrases that jump out at you. It shouldn't feel preachy. It should still leave a lot to the imagination, but it's got to mean something.”
There is symbolism at work here, the pineapples on the album artwork possibly refer to Liverpool's wealthy merchant's houses who had pineapples on the gateposts. One of the pineapples on the album cover is smoking, it all ties in.
Continuing the lyrical theme of real and unreal worlds, a film version of Neptune is in progress. "As we were putting the songs together, it mutated into something that was halfway between a band record and a soundtrack. We started making a film to accompany it. It's based around where we grew up in Liverpool, but it's got a surreal side to it. It's starts there, then it goes into outer space."
Listen to Higher Authorities:
http://smarturl.it/HigherAuthoritiesSP
Higher Authorities - Neptune album
Preorder at iTunes here: http://smarturl.it/NeptuneDL
Preorder at Domino here: http://smarturl.it/NeptuneDM
Neptune is a different expression of the fruitful musical partnership between a duo from a beloved cult band that have been at the forefront of continuing the UK’s rich psychedelic tradition for almost two decades. So who or what are the Higher Authorities? It’s partly a tongue in cheek reaction to scaremongering from the conspiracy theorists that would have you believe there's a sinister organisation controlling the world (“we’re obviously not the higher authorities”), but also inspired by “the idea of doing something daft. Everything in music now seems so regimented. Everyone takes a careerist approach to it, but a lot of the music we love was made when people were out of their heads."
The release date – 4/20, a day of huge significance in cannabis culture – is no coincidence. This is proper head music, an old-fashioned headphones album where the devil is in the lo-fi details. Neptune is a dense, disorientating sonic stew; a warped psychedelic dub album augmented by the mad box of sound effects that the legendary dub producer Adrian Sherwood, who mixed the record alongside the duo, brings to proceedings. Taut grooves are tapped out on battered old drum machines, ancient synths wheeze and drone alongside insidious keyboard lines, squelchy, fluid funk riffs and distorted guitars.
"Although songs might be based around just one riff or rhythm, things are changing every few bars. It's constantly evolving, with lots of even odder effects coming in. We recorded it ourselves in a small home studio set up – really cheap – then took it to Adrian. He likes to do it old style, mixing it while you're there. Between the three of us we mixed the whole album, but in between each mix Adrian would do dub mixes of every track. Some of that is even weirder.”
As well as dub, the key musical influences for Neptune were funk and disco. “The grooves are more obvious than in our other band. We were inspired by tacky 1970s disco – chart acts like Boney M and Odyssey. And then things like Jean Pierre Massiera, The Invaders and Cabaret Voltaire. But the echo side of it came from the third volume of Pebbles – it's the most out-there edition, with cheapo guitar pedals and that really amateur use of echo and effects where it's really over the top.”
The spoken word elements nod to The Telly Savalas and the poet Adrian Henri (founder of poetry rock group The Liverpool Scene, whose first album was produced by John Peel) and lyrics from the Captain Beefheart school of thought, where the meaning is neither totally cryptic nor utterly profound. Rather than a detailed imitation of reality, they seem to depict real and unreal worlds held together in a precarious balance.
“A lot of the lyrics are critical of the way that everyone wants to be successful – aspirational. It's quite cutting, but it's also trying to have a laugh in the face of that. It's about not just lying down and taking it. There's a defiant side to it as well. There’s not any particular meaning or narrative. It's about certain phrases that jump out at you. It shouldn't feel preachy. It should still leave a lot to the imagination, but it's got to mean something.”
There is symbolism at work here, the pineapples on the album artwork possibly refer to Liverpool's wealthy merchant's houses who had pineapples on the gateposts. One of the pineapples on the album cover is smoking, it all ties in.
Continuing the lyrical theme of real and unreal worlds, a film version of Neptune is in progress. "As we were putting the songs together, it mutated into something that was halfway between a band record and a soundtrack. We started making a film to accompany it. It's based around where we grew up in Liverpool, but it's got a surreal side to it. It's starts there, then it goes into outer space."
Category
🎵
Music