THE UPLIFTER

Although we often have shared values and beliefs, I've always felt that we all have our own independent flag that we fly high. I love that we have our own individual opinions and feelings about the world around us.

In this day and age, especially in Britain, I've often felt that from a young age there are certain expectations of how we should lead our lives, to jump onto the conveyor belt of working a 9-5 job, as if this is the 'norm'. It can be a hard decision at first to 'go it alone' and carve out your own destiny... I guess this release was to set this idea in stone from a personal perspective and represent the pursuit of a dream rather than follow what is so often socially expected of us.

Roots reggae and dub music has been a big part in this pursuit of that dream and has moved me to places both mentally and physically that would have been otherwise untouchable. So much so that I felt the urge to release my own thread to this fabric of music.

This is my interpretation, you may take away something different. Take from it what you will.

With this vinyl (and now digital download) release, I had a pre-conceived vision of the artwork in my head, with a certain feel to it.

This is when I found Brazilian artist, Victor Maristane. A very talented, hard working, passionate and all round nice guy based on the east cost of Brazil. I first stumbled across his work online whilst researching for another music project - I saw a pencil drawing of Alice from Jan Švankmajer's film 'Alice' (blog.maristane.com/en/2009/05/31/alice-2) and that was it, If I could, I wanted this person to create some drawings... So I got in touch... and the rest is history. More than one person after seeing the artwork has seen similarities in his pencil work to that of J.R Tolkien's, I can see why.

Fishing is favourite past time of mine and evokes many emotions associated with happy days on the river with family, hence the artwork featuring a fishing line and hook. The hat, is the hat I wore at every Uplifter gig until it literally fell apart. This image represents the beginning...

I teamed up with UK reggae/dub artist and producer Paul Fox at Sound Business Studio to create this in a culmination of nearly two years work in rural Hampshire, England.

Turn it up and play it LOUD!