Living On a Knife's Edge

We're the Ones is about fostering a sense of empowerment, understanding, unity and equality among listeners. It is also intended as an honest reflection of our troubled times and as a challenge to established narratives that continue to damage our societies.

In order to achieve this we have bound together a diverse collection of voices and perspectives across time & space dealing with urgent subjects. These voices come in the form of MCs, poets, historical speakers and singers. Musically we've let all of our influences, and theirs, freely commingle. The real story of this record is this constellation of contributors.

The title track is our first collaboration with London-based MC & spoken word activist Potent Whisper. The subject matter, lyrics, title and video concept were all his – we just provided the music. UK poet, radio presenter and long time collaborator Mr Gee brought us his celebrated work Living on a Knife's Edge, a painfully relevant unpicking of knife crime. With Stand Up we introduce a talented young Leeds poet called Natalie Davies, reciting her own excellent poem & singing backing vocals (having never recorded in the studio before).

Two more firsts are collaborations with up-and-coming MC / beatboxing champion MotorMouF from Nottingham on Stronger Than the Evils, as well as Komla MC – a Ghanaian expat here in the north of England – confronting the perils of addiction on Bad Thing backed by the magnificent singing of Daisy Martey (of Noonday Underground, Morcheeba et al).

Alongside the contemporary voices are a mixture of speech & singing samples from Malcolm X, Bessie Jones, Dorothy Dandridge, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Walker, Marge Piercy, bell hooks, Sweet Honey in the Rock and Margaret Walker. The dead often dance with the living on this record and this is haunting in a sense because the content of their output is so closely aligned despite the intervening decades.

We have also had the great fortune of recruiting some of Leeds’ finest musicians including rising star Emma Johnson with her stellar horn arrangements and superb saxmanship throughout; the well loved Kieran O’Malley turning a single violin into an entire string section; cameos from accomplished keyboardist and composer Jake Mehew on Stand Up and Teacher and an appearance from expat scratch DJ Mista Ed on We're the Ones.

For those wondering, the photograph used on the cover was taken by the great Ansel Adams at Manzanar, “most widely known as the site of one of ten American concentration camps where over 110,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II.”

We want to thank everyone who contributed to this record – the credits are as extensive as our gratitude. The dedication on the album is ‘to those who care about others.’ If you are listening and / or reading this, know that you are counted among those people and we thank you most of all for just that.