As a wise woman once said "let's start at the very beginning, that's a very good place to start". Lives of the Ignorant, the idea at least, came to me around 2015. I'd done various bands and projects and really couldn't be bothered putting another band together so I thought I'd,
1. offer my services as a jobbing guitarist to anyone that needed it and
2. work on a long term studio project.
I was fed up with writing songs about relatiopnships and so forth and a little bit tired of trying to chase whatever the latest musical trend was happening so thought, "fuck it, no-ones going to listen to any of this so I may as well make whatever I want."
Here we are...
LIVES OF THE IGNORANT (PART 1) is the start of one mans epic adventure. Follow his journey from recruitment into the Swedish Secret Service, hired as a government assassin deployed to topple regimes and remove specific targets, to his decision to leave planet Earth behind him. L.O.T.I.(P1) combines epic story telling with soaring guitars, retro synths and heartfelt lyrics.
Part one was written and recorded over about 2 years or so from 2018 to 2020. Although I'd came up with the title and concept back in around 2015, it wasn't until 2018 that I decided to try and cobble together the tracks for the first part. The narrative is quite tricky to follow here and although made perfect sense to me, I don't think anyone else could follow it. There's some quite good stuff on here, the opening track Stockholm in particular nails my favourite guitar tone and the final No More has some of what I consider to be some of my best lyrics. I've remastered it a couple of times to try and get it sounding a little fatter and fuller, I've got a feeling there's one more remaster in it before I'm fully done.
LIVES OF THE IGNORANT (PART 2) is the continuation of Agent 701 intergalactic adventures. Recruited by the ISS (Intergalactic Secret Service) as trained as a top negotiator, Agent 701 is involved in an adventure of love, murder, depair and redemtion. Critics are calling L.O.T.I. (P2) "An ethereal experience from beginning to end", "like a solar system consisted of 12 completely different worlds", an extraordinary trip unlike any other".
Part two was written and recorded from around 2019 to 2022. A number of things got in the way being finished sooner, the first was moving to a new country, I left the UK in 2020 and moved to the east coast of China, right in the middle of covid. That tends to slow you down when trying to make an album. It was just as well it did because I don't think the results would have been anywhere near as good if I hadn't have left. As a result I spent more times getting the songs right, more time making the lyrics more explicit in terms of the narrative and I was able to get some really talented people involved in both the singing and art work side of things. Really pleased with the results and probably the best and most cohesive piece of work I've ever done.