All songs wriiten and performed by John S. Palmer, Jr. (ASCAP)
Recorded, mixed & mastered by John Palmer at Andro-Media®
Image of Veil Nebula supernova remnant courtesy of NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team
Spacewave photograph by Greg Bolin
I first met Lee and his wife in Switzerland in 2009, helping Steve Marshall/John Saxon videotape his collaboration with Lee that resulted in the Grammy-nominated “Revelation” album for State of Emergency Ltd. on the MEGAWAVE label. I returned with a greater appreciation of the depth of Lee’s spirituality, humor, intelligence, and biting wit.
Tumultuous years passed, and I helped where I could whenever Lee came to the USA to tour and with the studio album “Must Be Free”. We started at his place in Jamaica in 2012, but weren’t able to complete most of the production until 2016.
I wanted to capture as much of Lee’s lyrical flow as I could without boxing him in with pre-arranged song structures, so we started by tracking his vocals. While I played a bit of electric bass and synthesizer, I used a lot of sample and loop libraries to add different sounds and snippets, slicing and dicing, changing the feel and the key where needed. I left enough of some familiar riffs there to pull the ear in.
Lee is a phenomenal artist. I’m honored to have the opportunity to work with this dub reggae legend. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly, so I’m glad our sessions went easily. The intensity of unsettled times that inspired this music gave it a life that I didn’t expect, so I felt that people should be able to hear the instrumentals, too. So here they are.
Ever forward,
John Palmer/Spacewave