The Happening - As Deep As We Can Go Without Drowning by Jamie Catto, Duncan Bridgeman, Maxi Jazz, Dave Randall & More!

We had the Faithless rhythm section, other percussionists from different disciplines, the keyboard player from Oasis, the singer from the Sneaker Pimps, the scratch DJ from Beck’s band, DJ Swamp (who’s also the USA champion!), and Lévon Minassian (the duduk player from Peter Gabriel’s Passion’ album & who’s featured in and on the “1 Giant Leap” CD & DVD, and is actually a jeweller who lives in Marseilles, France) and a Canadian, Paris-based clarinetist called Carol Robinson (who is deeply avant guard and plays the Lituanian birbine too on track #3), Liam, the singer from The Hothouse Flowers, singer Pauline Taylor and Dave Randall on guitars, sitar & programming.

Nick Raphael, who is the root of the most successful UK Reggae Sound System, Mannasseh was my brother’s roommate and I always wanted to do something with him. He brought the rhythm track along so we thought we’d do a straight, down the line, reggae track just before we set to the track. A couple of the guys had been to a local record shop with DJ Swamp to find some new stuff to mess with and they’d brought a reggae record which, in the old style, had the full track on side A and just the bare vocal on side B. Dave Randall decided to play sitar to make it more interesting and DJ Swamp scratched the vocal up “Brothers and Sisters good day! How ya doin? I hope you’re doing fine. Round and round - Irie! At 3:10 PM we were feaking out YESSSSS!!!! and the band just picked a key and dropped it on the signal - ‘PAF’ when that bass drops.

Maxi Jazz from Faithless showed up with Pauline Taylor. Pauline is the female vocalist on ‘Don’t Leave’ & Pauline said to Maxi, who’s folks are Jamaican, “do rap in a kind of reggae way if possible and say something about the three day album we were making” so his rhyme describes ‘The Happening’ and I wrote a chorus to space out the melody which Pauline sang.I just copied the words to match the reggae scratched voice and the icing on the cake with that tune - a little analog synth, was these three guys who were a horn section (and didn’t realise until it was too late) that they were out of their depth as they were very young, but as heaven would have it, at 3:15 PM their slightly wonky delivery (if you don’t know better) sounds like three old Jamaican dudes really lends flavour then at the end. Franky, our percussionist gem-of-a-man wanted to layer some rhythms to try something and it became a cool outro, it fit so perfectly like it outro’d to an intro.

It was all blessed! The whole 3 days. To improvise a whole record and have it hang together is rare. Everyone said I was mad to try it before hand. It translated impeccably, in my humble opinion! I hope you enjoy (the least accessible track) Sadness.”

Hope indeed springs eternal in “The Happening”. Please enjoy every sensual, subtle, funky, soul-filled & inspired note, beat & rhythm in this exquisitly crafted, highly spirited expression of unity through diversity.

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