Cover Artwork For 'The Mint Hotel'

Over the last few weeks, I've spent a considerable time working on ideas for the new album artwork. The music is inspired by the 1950s/60 so-called 'Beat Culture' which included writers such as William Burroughs and Hunter S Thompson, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.

The idea for the album is that it is set in a Las Vegas hotel where these people gather to plot the downfall of the US Government, comment on the social and artistic ruptures of the time and get very, very out of it on a pharmaceutical list which is no longer available to those except the near-dead. All of this done to a soundtrack of Free Jazz and Bebop. Only black music really spoke for this culture in a meaningful way.

So armed with these ideas I have been writing (as it stands) a 13-song album, the themes and titles of each song being a reference to characters and events which pop up in the books of these guys. As you might imagine from the titles, they are an oddball bunch - some of them may be known to you - but they represent the extremes os US social and political divides in what was an extremely turbulent period.

It's also the period in which my Dad visited the US and returned with stories of this life and culture which has always seemed to wonderful to me. The rules and prejudices which seem to dominate our society nowadays were still there, but the world was on the whole a more inspiring place to be. These people embodied the rebellious nature of the counterculture and continue to inspire me to this day.

Hope you like it. Due out 2023.