via SOS: “This album has been many years in the making.
Around 2005 we were gigging, playing hip hop breaks and supporting acts like KRS-One and Raekwon. We wrote a lot of our own material, but we never properly recorded it in a studio. We did however make lots of “one mic” recordings onto a mini-disk player. Tom kept hold of all of these recordings and in 2011 send copies of everything to the rest of the band. A short list of 30 were chosen to record properly. A basic studio was booked, and recording began. Initially it was pretty basic, just drums, bass, and keys, with guitars overdubbed the following day.
With these foundation rhythm tracks Tom went away and edited them, creating structure, extra layers and demo mixes. These demo mixes were used to send to MCs. It was decided to go with American MCs as the type of thing we listened to when we wrote a lot of our material was classic 90s Hip Hop. El Da Sensei & Sadat X were the first to respond to our request, and soon features were flying through every other week. We actually had enough material for 2 albums, but picked what we wanted to represent our first release and continued to develop the material, including adding session musicians for harps, brass, strings and cuts.
We chose 4 tracks to create videos for and got the ball rolling with various video makers. The final year was spent mixing, sequencing and deciding on artwork. The title ‘Cinder Hill’ is reference to where the band spent many afternoons practicing at John & Joe’s parent’s house, their mum Maggie passed away in 2016 and the album is dedicated to her for her endless support and love for the music.”
John Sam – Drums
Joe Sam – Bass & Guitars
Richard Halligan – Keys, saxes & flutes
Tom Caruana – Percussion, piano, samples and clav on 10 & 14
Amy Turk – Harp
Dominic Sewell – Violin & viola
Rebecca Sewell – Violin on Flying Fist
TJ Holmes – Cello on Come A Long Way
Andy Watts – Trumpet on Across The Bridge, Deep Breath & Phenomenal Don
Laura Impallomeni – Trombone on Across The Bridge
Sabira Jade – Singing on Trees For The Jungle & Coastin’
Andy Vickery – Guitar solo on Put It On Ya
Mr Thing – Cuts on Put It On Ya
DJ Jon Doe – Cuts on Coastin’
DJ Manipulate – Cuts on Flying Fist, Soothsayers, System Animal & That’s Facts
Dan Tuff – Cuts on Forward March
String Arrangements:
Continuation by Tom Caruana
Fighting Talk & Flying Fist by Richard Halligan
Come A Long Way by Richard Halligan & Dominic Sewell
“Cinder Hill” releases September 29, 2017 on Bandcamp
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