UK Crisis – Groundbreaking Rock Crossover
rock, crossover, heavy rock, prog rock, progressive rock, hard rock, alternative rock, grunge, uk crisis, ukcrisis, neville meredith, russell grooms,
Following on a year after ‘Future Dark Ages’ Uk Crisis have produced the Rock, Post-Grunge album ‘Perpetual Motion’..
Neville Meredith and Russell Grooms returned to the classic hard rock sound from their ‘Adversity’ days. This is a high energy album with angry songs that hit home in this age of Crisis. Album link here
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Future Dark Ages sees producer Neville Meredith reunited with former UK Crisis member Russ Grooms (Adversity, Spirit Level, Small Town Prisoner) for what is arguably their most ambitious project yet. Seamlessly fusing every twist and turn that both producers have showcased together and in solo work, Future Dark Ages once again confirms a refusal to be compromised by creative restraints or limits… In this way, the band moves cyclically through cinematic soundscapes, hard-hitting synth-driven trance, and classic prog-rock.
The result is a masterpiece of songwriting, instrumental showmanship, and lyrics that are telling both of present times and poignant echoes of history. If their point is that nothing changes and the end is the beginning then Future Dark Ages is a fusing of everything that UK Crisis has achieved over the last 20 years, coming full circle with 45 minutes worth of music that is finely crafted to the finest detail.
Fiercely independent and non-negotiating UK Crisis shows that in 2021 there are no genres, and no boundaries left in modern music. With maturity and confidence that only comes after 1000’s of studio hours bent over faders, Future Dark Ages proves that the prog-rock concept album is no longer an art-form reserved for fading generations but an evolving statement that is greater than the sum of its parts.
To contact UK Crisis for licensing music, Radio play and media inquiries please email press@crisisonline.com
Have a look at the Future Dark Ages website futuredarkages.com
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Looking back 20 odd years to the UK CRISIS sessions for Adversity and Spirit Level, it’s mostly a blur.
Both Nev and I had come out of the wreckage of Shuzbutt and I think it’s evident that the material on Adversity reflects that. The pop influences on Masquerade and In Your Eyes were lingering reminders of where we’d come from where-as heavier tracks such as 40 Miles and No Good People were an outlet for the anger we both felt at being stuck in dead-end seaside towns with what seemed to be very little future. In contrast, Spirit Level seems a return to the EDM influences that Nev had grown up within South London, especially with a large amount of the drums and bass being re-samples from previously recorded tracks
Of the specifics, I remember from the sessions were the creative spaces we had to use to record drums. One place was an old barn off the A2 near Faversham. The hessian floor played havoc with the drum hardware; everything moved around as I played and it was freezing. I mean FUCKING freezing. It was all borrowed drums, half-broken mixing desks, and an unreliable ADAT machine. I don’t think we ever booked into a proper studio as we couldn’t afford it. For Spirit Level we used an early version of the Roland V Drum kit which you can hear well on Cradle; the backwards reverb is a patch I found buried somewhere in the brain. Other equipment I remember using was an old ’77 Fender Jazz bass which I’d had since the Shuzbutt days. Like all things, it was eventually traded for something else. Listening back I think a distorted Rickenbacker would’ve worked well but at the time it was a case of whatever we had.
Across the 2 albums, the only track I remember directly contributing to was Crash, and that was the middle 8. For the most part, these are Nev’s songs which I augmented where necessary. Nev would mix for hours on end and present different mixes and even when I thought we’d settled on the final one it would change. I guess the reason they’re being re-released again is that he’s never been happy with them. I don’t have an issue with that way of working, I’m just more of a get it done and move on kinda guy.
My lasting memory was that we knew we were good but we didn’t really know where we belonged amongst the pub bands playing the same old same old so we kept ourselves to ourselves while everyone else sang ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’ at the top of their lungs.
Nev was an early adopter of the internet and getting music out there independently with full creative control. He still is and for that I applaud him. Listening back, I’m proud of what we created and it’s a shame that the quality can’t ever be the way we intended but technology has spoken there. However the songs hold up, the playing is pretty good considering how young we were so I’ll look back fondly to my time making music with Nev and be glad to have worked with someone so passionate and dare I say visionary. If the internet lets a few other people hear a snap-shot in time then why not. I hope you enjoy it.
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Russell and I shared a love of classic, progressive, and hard rock. Bands like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, and Cream were inspirational. But so were bands like Supertramp, Genesis, Yes, Rush, Pink Floyd, and Marillion. These were the bands we grew up with. We had also just come out of the Britpop band ‘Shuzbutt’ so several songs that had been destined for that band ended up on this album… I know we wanted a harder sound because we were both angry young men. The frustration in those days revolved around our location, the people around us, and the fucking madness of having to suck up to major record labels in order to progress. It’s not what I wanted to do. I did not want to be altered by record label suits. I did not want Producers or Stylists fucking about with our sound, our image, or our art.
Straight away I realised the Importance the Internet would have on the Music Industry. I already owned a record label I started with a friend. It was called ‘Kurve Records’. Releases Including the Shuzbutt vinyl EP, Escapism, House Of Cards, and various other recordings of bands I had produced. In 96 I founded the Romantown Label, at the time, specifically for ‘UK Crisis’. We started releasing music and videos on the Internet on our own website a year before mp3.com began and 9 years before youtube was founded. Our music had been downloaded thousands of times before we had any kind of online distributor. When mp3.com began it was exactly what was needed. An online Music Distributor for Independent artists that manufactured CDs and paid royalties. It was obvious that the established music industry, which was way behind on the Importance of the Internet, would eventually try to destroy Independents. When mp3.com was taken over by Universal, a major record label, It began a massive shift in the industry which has led to the market being saturated with huge amounts of garbage music. Making it virtually impossible to find talented artists. The death of the CD and the rise of streaming services have destroyed Indy musician’s ability to earn money from their craft. However, if you make music you just don’t stop because of adversity. You keep going, as long as you enjoy doing it, keep going. With a dedicated fan base, the UK Crisis keeps going.
The album ‘Adversity’ was a testament to the challenge of recording an album outside of a traditional recording studio setup. The main live recording sessions were done in 1996. The drums and rhythm guitar were recorded live in a damp, cold insect riddled farm barn. We used a dubious 16 channel mixing desk with a condemned 8 track adat machine. We had good microphones for the drums, every drum was miked up but we always had overhead mics and this usually ended up the mix we used rather than close mic mixes. We were always looking for the John Bonham / Cozy Powell huge acoustic drum sound.
I had two guitar amps I switched between. a 1972 Hiwatt custom 100 amp and matching 4×12 cab and a 1960’s Burns orbit 6 3×12 all transistor combo. This was a fantastic amp that used to belong to an ex-member of Hawkwind. It had a gorgeous Vibe setting on it which you can hear on tracks like ‘Still’ and ‘Living in the dark’. The Hiwatt has always been the main amp for guitar sounds. At the time of this album, I was using a ratt overdrive pedal, an old soundcity flanger, a very old Ibanez flying pan and a crybaby wah wah. But for the live recording, I would just use the ratt as it was important to record everything as clean as possible. I used my Gibson Les Paul studio for the entire recording.
Drums and guitars were recorded directly onto tape with no added effects. no compression, no eq. There was no separation between the drums and guitar amps so it was a live recording. A vocal track was recorded live as well, used as a guide but quite often made it onto the mix. It was important to maintain everything as live as possible. We had been used to live performance coming off the back of Shuzbutt and months of gigging. Other guitar parts, bass, vocals, and synths were overdubbed in various locations. Keyboard wise I used a Korg poly 800 II, a 1960’s Intercontinental Piano 7, and a collection of vintage synth sounds that were sampled and played through an Akai s950 sampler. An initial CD was produced that had only 8 tracks on it. This was then released later on mp3.com and various other OMD’s of the time. An 11 track version of the album was later released on cd through mp3.com.
When it came to remastering the album I wanted to remix it from the original adat tapes. However, over the years, they had not been stored properly and they were all ruined. I had hundreds of mixes on DAT tapes and cassettes. Several of the tracks on the album were digitized recordings from a cassette tape. It was a labor of love to try and get them to sound as they now do. In hindsight, I am glad the original adat tapes were destroyed because I found mixes of the tracks on tape that could never be reproduced. As we were only working with 8 tracks guitars and vocals were re-recorded so many times the previous versions would be wiped. I would always mix down onto tape or dat after a mixing session. That was how we backed up things back then. Completely different now with unlimited tracks and massive disk drives. Mixing was live, as it used to be… pushing faders and tweaking knobs in real-time. Modern DJs have no idea how much more skilled it was to mix a track off a multitrack tape machine on a 16/24 track mixing desk with racks and racks of effect processors.
In conclusion: I love this album… It is raw, It is unprocessed, it is live, it is how a rock album should sound. I could not have done this without Russell. He was the only person I knew at the time who was capable of working with strange time signatures and the habit I had of going off on one… improvising the song as we were recording it. He can anticipate what I’m doing as I do it. A rare skill and a multi-talented musician.
‘Claustrophobia’ & ‘Shoot The Man’ were the first tracks recorded in 1986. The band was still at school and very young. Neville was 15, Ian 16, and Simon 17. The rest of the album was recorded in 3 more sessions ending in 1989. Unfortunately, the studio they went to made little effort to help in the production of the songs, which was a huge problem as the kids with no experience of studio production had to produce the album themselves. And this no doubt explains the sheer originality of the music they produced.
The original demo tapes ‘Guardian Of Time’ and ‘Interiors’ gained extensive radio airplay on the BBC with the band being interviewed in 1988, all be it completely drunk and incoherent. Being pretentious was just a byproduct of Private School Education… They described themselves as an Anglo-Canadian trio. The drummer was Canadian and Neville thought it would be cool to have a Canadian in the band. Even though he had only been playing the drums a few months before the recordings. Neville sacked their first completely competent drummer for this reason only! as it turned out Ian was exactly what the band needed…. power! and some good humor and confidence in abundance. Simon was the cool-headed bass player, enthusiastic and always ready to tell Neville his songs were good even when quite a lot of them were total rubbish. Simon also escaped nearly being fried alive when the studio engineer wired up his wrist to the mixing desk to earth him! The reason for this? simple really the band’s equipment was as cheap and crappy as you could possibly have.
Simons bass was the school bass, a fender copy that buzzed like a meth addict’s breakfast. Neville’s guitar was possibly the cheapest pile of crap ever purchased. It was called a pulse, a small red flying vee copy. Utter garbage but somehow he made it sing. The drum kit was a school kit and that sounded awful. The engineer’s gaffer taped it to death… there was no resonance left at the end of it… However later on they upgraded a few things. Neville bought a Charvel/Jackson guitar, Ian bought some roto toms and his own snare drum. Simon bought an Aria bass that had an active pickup!! It is difficult to remember what amps were used. Neville had a cheap fender sidekick 25w which was a transistor amp. Simon had bought the band a PA system with an old Peavey head, that could have been used as well. And various amps in the studio which did include an old Marshall 100w head. Synths and keyboards.. well they borrowed a lot. A Roland electric piano, Roland D50, Korg Poly 800 II, and used a Roland Juno and a few other things from the studio.
At the end of the day, the band created an album that you will never hear the likes of again…
YouTube… saturated with talentless garbage!
YouTube has algorithms that seemingly remove talent and favor mindless pap created by amateurs or professional viral video makers cashing in on advertising click-throughs…
To be seen you have to create eye-catching titles and descriptions for your video… you’ve seen them, ‘Girl falls over’, ‘Man blows himself up with a hairdryer’, ‘You have to see this, ‘This blew my mind’.. etc..etc…
This totally devalues an artist’s ability to simply put their art across as it should be. In the case of a band, the band name, the song title, a description about it.. that should be enough! we should not be forced to fuck about and make ourselves look ridiculous just to get a video seen.
The other method YouTube uses is subscriptions, the more you have the more chance you will be found in the search engine. So people pay money to buy subscriptions from third-party companies. The odds are stacked against talent… it’s infuriating!
So that in mind, if you have a YouTube account you could help us out immensely by subscribing to our record labels YouTube channel where our videos reside.
Be Seeing You…
