Shaped around words taken from Count Ossie’s famous track ‘Poem,’ Tom Neilan and Gareth Kirby send up a haunting tribute to the reggae innovator in verylittle percussion and high pressure bass weight.
“In the stillness of the night and the clamour of the day, Count Ossie’s sensible poetic words ring real in every single method. Long live his tradition.” This tribute opens the mostcurrent task from Alan Johnson, the dub-drenched alias of manufacturers Tom Neilan and Gareth Kirby. Arriving in the exactsame year as the 50th anniversary of Grounation, the ground-breaking album from Count Ossie’s fundamental group, The Mystic Revelation Of Rastafari, ‘Stillness’ serves as both classic monolith to and immediate invocation of the spirit of the famous drummer, band leader and vital figure to lotsof Rastafari. Shaping lethal bass weight and verylittle percussion around words taken from Ossie’s track ‘Poem’, Neilan and Kirby trace the origins of their resonant sound while offering a particular declaration of their own, illustration from the deep well of earth energy tapped into by Ossie’s words. “This is a track that atfirst came together relatively rapidly in the studio in Bristol, some time back in 2020, primarily due to the truth that it had clear instructions and strong narrative for us,” describe the duo. “We think visual representation can be as strong in its impact on the senses as any audio output, in developing an completely various vibrant in shipment of an concept. Working with Liam Higgins on the visual side of this job truly supplied us with the capability to journey artistically along courses hardlyever tookatrip within this type of music, from an audio visual viewpoint. Providing the chance to checkout imagination naturally and collaboratively on a visual level within a special job for both of us, we truly desired to provide something special and individual.”
“We had comparable analyses on style and it felt right to take it to a moody, frenzied at times and ultimately paranoid, location,” they continue. “We think the hybrid instructions of both live and still images works well in the context of the musical message.” Snatches of shadowboxing set versus quick approaching sunset, lonesome spaces framed in black and red montage, monolithic property structures piercing dim skies, each spooky image records the swirling stress and sneaking fear of ‘Stillness,’ soaked in the anxious balance inbetween fear tension and abrupt surges of noise and motion. “Ever because I was a youth / I’ve constantly been browsing for the fact / But havingactually been informed so lotsof lies / Life, like excellent music, neverever passesaway,” intones Count Ossie, at once prophetic and cautionary, a medicaldiagnosis of modern battle as well as a gesture towards a suggests of conquering it. “A guy is a patient of no mean order / I should passaway one day you’ll all hear individuals state / Storing up wealth, neglecting their health / But a tree is understood by its fruits.” Directing us back to the earth, the ground and the power that lives in it, both Count Ossie and Alan Johnson are linedup in their grasp of the physical, Ossie in his wonderful realist pronouncements, Neilan and Kirby in the heft of their deep bass excavations, the rise of smoke-filled air hurrying from hulking noise system. Designed to be magnified loud in the dark, ‘Stillness’ zeroes in on the reflective strength of dubstep, illuminating internal caverns with their sound, enabling Count Ossie’s words the area their weight needs.
‘Stillness’