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The Ice Cracks But Holds Firm

from A Crack Where The Light Gets In by Steve Lawson

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This is one where the title came before I gave much thought as to why. The name appeared pretty much immediately. Some of it is just there in the sound. The ice cracking, the sparkles, but the frailty, the sense that things might fall apart but ultimately will be OK? That’s just my melancholic optimism rearing its head again.

The world is in many ways in a perilous state - shit’s breaking down all over the place, climate change threatens everything, and the insane despots questioning the obvious reality of it are no longer dictators, instead they’re business leaders, protecting an ever growing pile of useless cash, playing a fucked-up game of ‘who can get the biggest numbers in their column in the excel spreadsheet of global finance’.

But humans can sometimes be amazing. We’ve caused all this nonsense, but we can sometimes surprise ourselves. To quote Bruce Cockburn again, “Never had a lot of faith in human beings, but sometimes we manage to shine”. The ice is definitely cracking, but maybe we can help it hold firm, maybe we can reverse the destruction. So many things are up in the air, so many things that could fall either way into catastrophe or away from the brink. I’m fascinated by all the options, by the optimism of the Bernie Sanders camp in the US and the Corbyn-surge in the UK, but also by the exploration of global collapse that people like the Dark Mountain project are undertaking, but those in Greece who recognise that it's already a failed state and are exploring living off-grid.

Our first priority right now is to the poor, to those who can’t help themselves. Let’s get that shit right, let’s get them off the ice, and then work out what to do next.
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On a technical level, this was the first piece I recorded with the Quneo midi controller - I received it after I’d started recording these new albums - you can hear where things were heading before it came along on the subscriber-only album, Closing In. This was the last track on that album, included here as well because it is definitely part of the story of this album too...

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from A Crack Where The Light Gets In, released September 14, 2015

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The UK's most celebrated and prolific solo bassist - alternating between solo and collaborative releases - have a rummage around and see what you find. The subscription is by FAR the best way to keep track of the many musical goings on!

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