It's been many years since Red Beat released an album of really new music. Lockdown created the perfect conditions for online collaborations with friends to reestablish the sound of one of post-punk's most experimental bands. The first EP featured 3 brand new songs written by Roy Jones on acoustic guitar. The sound of Red Beat was always guitar driven and after many years of writing on the keyboard, these songs had a raw rock power that had been missing from Roy's pallet for many years. Chameleon Regeneration is all about trying to speed up our reaction to the climate emergency, adapting and reshaping the algorithm of humanity to restore harmony with the ecosystem. Twister of Destiny draws on the trance-like, elemental, hypnotic grooves of the Wheel era, to create a primal rock prayer to the forces of the universe for support. The final song on the EP, The Journey, is a driving rock tune extolling the importance of setting off and being present in the now. Sometimes we forget that having a purpose gives our life energy and meaning in itself. Just walking the path, or driving towards our goal is itself a powerful and invigorating action. We should savour every moment of the struggle because the energy we put into our journey affects the final achievement and quality of our goal. No matter how hard it seems. All three of these songs are included in the album.
The next release of Red Beat2020 was Love Can Bring the Healing. This involved collaboration with guitarist Graham Craigmyle who had been a longtime acquaintance of the Jones brothers since their days of playing pub gigs in High Wycombe in the late 1970s. Graham sent several sound files he played over a backing track Roy had made with advice from drummer, Paul Jones, over what beat would work best. Texan singer, Rachel Delgado, who had worked with Roy on the song Time & Love also contributed backing vocals and lead vocals in the middle eight/breakdown section. Once the song had been mixed and mastered at West Rock studios, a video was made with Andy Jacques on bass, Paul Jones on drums, Graham Craigmyle on guitar and Roy Jones on vocals. Rachel Delgado obviously couldn't make it all the way from Texas so she send some footage of herself singing to add to the edit. The result was Red Beat's most successful video to date, outperforming even 'Dream', their first video made in 1982 in the days when the tech was more complicated. Love Can Bring the Healing has a simple message about helping others who are struggling and at the same time raising your own spirits. This is the leading track off the new album.
Following on from the success of this single, Red Beat released Zachary Jones, a reggae song which was written back in the day but never recorded or played live. Following the huge outcry at the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police in the US, Roy felt it was finally time to record and release this song with the help of old friend and former Red Beat guitarist during the Red White and Phoenix era, Rastafarian, Cheez McKenzie. The song tells the story of a British black man who sees things from a different perspective and suffers institutional racism from the police. Not only does Cheez play some unique guitar licks on the song but also performs a powerful spoken word 'toast' over the dub/chill section. There are vocal contributions from Cheez's daughter Josie and Martine Branford, again done at a distance while horn section Jason Osbourne on trumpet and Dom Norcross on tenor and baritone sax was recorded at West Rock studios in Pembrokeshire. The video was filmed at various locations including Pembroke Dock and Tiger Bay in Cardiff. The video was dedicated to the memory of Raymond Harvey, who co-produced the single Power Reflex/Strangers at Midnight and shared his energy and contacts with the band back in the 80's. Zachary Jones is the second track on the album.
Roy works with a Buddhist choir called Many Treasures Chorus and got several members to sing on the track, Time and Space which came, in its original form, out of a jam at the choir practice. Rob Miller and Nick Dowsett sang bass, Martine Branford sang tenor and alto and Stephany Jacques sang soprano. Although Andy Jacques didn't actually play bass on the recording, he played bass during the original jam. The song Phoenix Rising is another reggae song all about overcoming difficulties and earlier experiences which have shaped and limited our expectations in life. It uses the images of the rising sun, the Lion King and the Phoenix, images of transcendence to encourage everyone to hope for a brighter future.
The title track, Bluestone Traveller has a bit of a story behind it. Roy has always been a keen archeologist and lover of megalithic sites. In 1980 Red Beat were invited to play Stonehenge Free Festival. They went on stage at 3am in the morning on the eve of the solstice to a packed audience of punks, freaks and travellers. The original circle at Stonehenge was made of smaller bluestones like the one in the album cover, made of spotted dolerite which comes from the Preseli Hills in Pembrokeshire, west Wales. Archeologists have long believed that the circle originally stood at an undiscovered site in Preseli and were moved one at a time and reassembled into a circle on Salisbury Plain at the site where the iconic Stonehenge with its huge sarsen stone megaliths now stands. Thinking about this one day, Roy wrote the words to Bluestone Traveller while out for a walk. Three weeks later there was a documentary on BBC 2 which revealed that the actual site where the stones originally stood had been discovered at Waun Mawn overlooking the slopes of Foel Eryr in the Preselis. The cover photo for the album is taken at this site where today only one standing stone remains but an excavation has proved that the footprint of one of the bluestones now at Stonehenge originally stood in this site and that the dates match the theory that the stones were moved around 2100 BCE in the late Neolithic. The song features acoustic guitar and Celtic harp.
The last two tracks on the album are Freedom Is Now and Unity. Both these songs are slightly different in feel from the rocky or reggae feels of the rest of the album. Freedom is now is very jazzy and has an unusual tonal technique in which the key keeps rising upwards throughout the song, thereby changing the vocal tone from bass to treble by the end. Lyrically it explores the philosophy of the Lotus Sutra which portray's the heart as a skilled painter which transforms the environment, social interactions and our personal experiences as we move through different colours of feeling from moment to moment. The final track Unity is sonically the most upbeat and happy song on the album. It extolls the virtue of Unity between people and the amazing things that can be achieved when we unite together. There is an upbeat video for the song on YouTube which tries to capture the power of youth, united to make a better world. So the album takes us on a journey which ends ultimately with a plea for unity to banish the darkness.