NEWS

May 11 2018: dBridge, Fresh, Vegas and Maldini will deliver their fourth Bad Company UK album, Ice Station Zero.

Their first 10-track document since 2002’s Shot Down On Safari, Ice Station Zero comprises previous singles Equilibrium, Tetris, Nomad and Primal Fire and features collaborations with Mat Zo & Kill The Noise, old Rawhill Cru ally Sypda, UK rock producer of the moment Dan Lancaster and, bizarrely, Fatman Scoop. Gradually forming, developing and taking shape since the foursome reformed to create Equilibrium in 2015, they describe the album, which is due on Ram Records, as a very natural process and the most conceptual body of work they’ve done to date.

“Equilibrium was the tester day,” explains Vegas. “We all went into the studio together and we had a great time as friends and the music came together.”

“We’ve just really enjoyed the whole experience, a lot more than any other times,” says dBridge. “We’ve all got a lot of other projects on, but we’ve we made a concerted effort to meet up as often as we can. From what we learnt from the last time we were together, we wanted us to be all there at the start of each track to get those ideas down and getting something together but as challenging as it was we pulled it off.”

Ice Station Zero maintains the variety and scope of the singles BCUK have released since reforming. Ranging from the beautifully aggressive, roughened machine soul signature they made their name with to more vocal-focused tracks and all shades of gully in between, the album sets the band’s widest parameters to date and packs a number of surprises along the way. Including a visceral, tribal sound from Fatman Scoop that no other act has ever conjured out of him. As wide as the remit is, BCUK have remained steadfast in their consistency.

“We’ve wanted to keep things from a real place and spontaneous,” states Fresh. “It’s better that it’s not perfect in every way.”

“Imperfection is part of it,” add dBridge. “We weren’t going to get caught up in the over analytical side of things for the expense of a vibe.”

Ice Station Zero certainly promises vibes. And in-keeping with traditional Bad Company mythology (see: what or who are The Nine?), the reason and story behind the album is vague but clearly means something to all four members of the band.

“It’s a universe that’s been inspired by a few things we’ve seen and talked about over the years,” explains Fresh. “We always like to imagine ourselves in a setting when we make an album for it to have some context to it. For this album we’ve had more of a chance to do that than previously. Before we would have a bunch of tracks and then consider how we might make it an album. With this we came into the other way. There were some wild cards that we wanted to keep in the album because we felt they fit, like Equilibrium, but we were in a special mindset when we made this album….”

Fans will be able to get into that mindset themselves from May 11 as the album lands via Ram Records. More to be revealed on UKF very soon…

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