SOURCE – It has been a long time since the previous album Black Market Enlightenment (2018) came out. What happened since this release?
Mick Moss (Vocals, Acoustic, Electric & Lead Guitars, Bass) – Quite a lot has happened since then in my personal and professional life, and also on my political radar….
Personally… . it was not good a period whatsoever. I heard news of death, suicide, betrayal, and scandal. I caught covid, had a breakdown and saw deliberate lies spoken about myself in interviews by a competitive ex-colleague.
Politically… from a UK perspective it became evident at the start of this new decade that we were in the hands of, and politically entangled with, narcissists, sociopaths, psychopaths in positions of supreme power. People who had little or no respect for the citizens of their nations, yet who used nationalism as a political tool.
Professionally….. as far as music is concerned, it was a very fruitful time despite the obstacles. After ‘Black Market…’ came the live DVD ‘An Epitaph’ (featuring our performance with a string quartet in Ukraine from 2016). Once that was released, I moved onto ‘A Profusion of Thought’ and started planning the Antimatter 20th anniversary tours only to have Covid 19 come along and shit on everything. Everybody has their own story of this awful period, of course. Personally, as I said, I caught Coronavirus very early on and my lungs took a massive hit. Recovery took a long time with me being unable to walk for more than a few minutes without getting out of breath, and, obviously, as a touring singer this was a very scary time. Later on in the year I did a few guest vocals on peoples albums as a way to test my voice and get myself singing again, and then I just carried on singing for various bands as the requests just seemed to keep coming in. By the end of 2021 I had sang for Michal Lapaj, Oceans of Slumber, Clouds, Decembre Noir and also hooked up with Andrea Chiodetti (ex-The Foreshadowing) to co-write some songs for the album and EP of the MMXX project. In fact. ‘The Tower’ from that album is a career highlight for me, and we have since formed our own project (my third after Antimatter and Sleeping Pulse) for which we have already written a lot of songs. It’s kind of a melodic grunge metal mash-up, very exciting for me, and we’ll get the debut album into a studio once it is ready.
SOURCE – Is there a happening or a kind of story in your life that will always remind you at the making of this album?
Mick Moss (Vocals, Acoustic, Electric & Lead Guitars, Bass) – I’m not too sure. That kind of thing reveals itself over time, as in what memories are retained and which ones are lost. Plus, the origin of all of these songs are literally scattered throughout the last 20 years of my life as they are all unused songs cut from previous albums, so there is a lot of recollections in this album… little snapshots of memories from various times in my adult life. But I guess if there was to be any particular life event that I will remember about the actual recording of ‘A Profusion Of Thought’. it would be linked to what I just mentioned – that period of going through the dark covid years, coming out of it the other side and then getting the album finally made with great relief.
SOURCE – Let us focus on the new album. Can you tell something more about the title A Profusion Of Thought.
Mick Moss (Vocals, Acoustic, Electric & Lead Guitars, Bass) – I’ve always gone through periods of being a prolific writer, and I’ve been writing for 30 years now, so inevitably this means that I have always had more songs than I have space on albums. Obviously if I carry on like this then I will die one day with a huge collection of music in my head that will just be wiped from existence along with me., so I made it my mission a few years back to rescue some of these songs from certain death. And that’s the concept that ties these songs together and also where the title comes from… in English a ‘profusion’ of something means literally an abundance, so in this instance ‘a profusion of thought’ means (to myself and this album) ‘an abundance of songwriting’. The relief I feel is almost overwhelming, to actually have these songs out in the real world.
SOURCE – You’ve got a lot of guests and friends involved in the album. Any fun stories about how they anyone got involved?
Mick Moss (Vocals, Acoustic, Electric & Lead Guitars, Bass) – In reality, there’s not too many guests on this album as I play the core instruments of guitar, bass and keyboards myself, as that’s the working model that I have used for most Antimatter recordings over the last decade (as well as quite a few songs from the first two albums). I compose all of the drums myself too by manually playing them electronically on my demos, then bringing in a live drummer to play the parts in the studio for the subsequent album recordings. That’s how I started my solo project back in 1995, and of course that solo project went on to become one half of Antimatter in 1998, and then continued to be Antimatter from 2005 onwards. Back to the subject of ’95, when I started my project I was already exhausted from trying to get line-ups to stay together, as previous to that, as a teenager, I had already been in about 6 different line-ups/configurations and I figured in the end that if I just did everything myself then I wouldn’t need band-mates and therefore nobody could quit. I wanted to make music as an escape, as therapy, and I didn’t need anybody fucking that up for me. So I bought myself a 4-track, a drum machine, an electric guitar and started from zero, and that’s how I’ve tried to keep it ever since. For Antimatter albums, of course I do have a few guest musicians in to perform instruments that I can’t, and that keeps things fresh for me. An example on the last album is Paul Thomas who played flute and saxophone, and on ‘Black Market Enlightenment’, Vardan Baghdasaryan who played Qamancha. These additions are the icing on the cake for me. As for Paul Thomas, I was watching an old late-80s episode of ‘The Tube’ (a famous old UK music TV show) last year and I was like ”Fuckinghell, is that Paul?”… and it was. There he was playing saxophone for Thomas Lang… 35 years ago. He hasn’t changed.
SOURCE – Let us zoom in to some of the songs. For instance Heathen struck me, because it has such a grand momentum. Can you tell a little bit more about that song?
Mick Moss (Vocals, Acoustic, Electric & Lead Guitars, Bass) – ‘Heathen’ was written for the previous album ‘Black Market Enlightenment’, but I wrote so profusely for this particular album that I only included about two thirds of what I had composed on the final release. Also cut from the album were the songs ‘Templates’, ‘Entheogen’ (both which appear on ‘A Profusion of Thought’), ‘Refraction’ and ‘The Gilded Side’ plus some soundtrack music for the accompanying documentary ‘Finding Enlightenment’ and lots of other partial songs too. But, yeah, ‘Heathen’ is a song about myself in my late teens, and it is a very sarcastic lyric, very critical of myself and my naivety in those years. It is the first time I have ever really gone in hard on myself lyrically. I love it. But in the end it had to get cut from ‘Black Market…’ because that progressive part in the middle, the kinda acid-jazz riffy section, needed way more time to figure out than I actually had, So, it was simply time restraints that caused it to be removed from the album. It was a pity at the time, but as I knew that the next album was to be a collection of unrecorded songs, all was not lost.
SOURCE – What are the plans with video clips?
Mick Moss (Vocals, Acoustic, Electric & Lead Guitars, Bass) – I made a promo video for the track ‘Fold’ myself in 6 days, working morning to night. This was just as Id finished the album so I was already kinda burned out, but I got on the coffee and saw the process through. It turned out great. I’ve always been interested in video, I went on a film course back in 1994 and I was pretty much just left to my own devices there, making a zero budget trash comedy for fun, editing on two VHS-S machines. Very primitive. As the years have rolled on I’ve always kept a hand in, writing scripts for Antimatter or Sleeping Pulse promos, making documentaries for bonus discs, video adverts for tours, backing videos for live appearances, so I still have the taste for it. I’m currently planning another documentary at the moment which is quite an exciting prospect for me. What I love about my position right now is that I can pretty much do what I want in terms of creativity. Musically I have Antimatter, Sleeping Pulse and my new (as yet untitled) project with Andrea Chiodetti, my solo acoustic stuff and whatever guest vocals I care to do, plus I can keep a hand in video work if and when I want, so I guess I have the life I always wanted/needed as I’m obsessively creative almost to the point of it being detrimental. I was a part time roofer from 1996-2008, and while I was working I would always be composing in my head, working songs out, so I literally don’t have a choice. It’s not as if I can switch it off.
SOURCE – With making a living at music seemingly becoming more and more difficult, what steps do you believe should be taken to make things better financially for musicians?
Mick Moss (Vocals, Acoustic, Electric & Lead Guitars, Bass) – That’s a matter for each individual musician to figure out for themselves, as each one will differ in terms of what they want to achieve. Personally, I think it’s obvious that the driving factor behind being a musician and playing or writing music should be the love of music and the urge for expression alone. Nothing else, certainly not money. Honestly, if money is your ambition then the music business is the wrong industry to enter as only a small percentage of musicians actually get to earn their living through their work. And make no mistake -there are people here who will rip you off. I’ve been ripped off in this business by strangers and also by people who I thought were friends, in fact moreso by people who I thought were friends. So… what steps do I think should be taken to make things better financially for musicians? Get a day job. Money didn’t really become involved in Antimatter until around the fifth album ‘Fear Of A Unique Identity’, that’s when the project became ‘professional’ in my opinion, and by that time the project was over ten years old, and I’d been carrying it solo for over 5 years, so I was like ”Oh, okay, so this is my job now???”… it was a real shock to me and I do appreciate how lucky I have been in that respect, that my passion has become my occupation. Because up until then, as I’ve mentioned, I’d been working as a part time roofer, carrying buckets of hot tar up ladders (from which I still have a scar on my forehead), accidentally getting hit in the eye by nails, walking across wooden beams with rolls of felt on my shoulders, carrying 20kg propane gas bottles up ladders and fucking my spine up… occasionally brutal work but it kept me going financially and in my spare time I worked relentlessly on my music.
SOURCE – If there is anything you like to add, please do…
Mick Moss (Vocals, Acoustic, Electric & Lead Guitars, Bass) – What I always say. If you’re struggling right now, hold on, change will come.
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