The new album from producer Tom Caruana, Strange Planet, is released this Friday. Before that, we’re premiering the video for the latest single, a fast-paced track featured vocals from no less than indy rap icon, Mr. Lif. Watch below, and keep scrolling for our Tom Caruana interview, conducted by Matt Horowitz.
What specifically inspired you to make a space/intergalactic journey-influenced album this time around for Strange Planet?
The album “made itself” in a way; I was gathering various features from emcees and King Kashmere sent me a track about being an alien stranded on an unspecified planet. That track was originally called “Strange Planet,” but I decided, instead, to call the track “Stranded” and named the project Strange Planet. The collection of songs that I was grouping together for Strange Planet, generally, had slightly unusual-sounding beats that seemed to bring something out of the emcees. I do like to make albums with a bit of a theme and it’s all thanks to Kashmere for sparking the idea! Some of the tracks date back to 2015-16 and I started grouping the tracks together into the Strange Planet album in 2018. At that stage, I started sending out a few vocal tracks along with the beats to emcees, just so they could hear what others have done. I’ve always done that with these types of albums (like Cinder Hill, too.) I find it gets the best out of emcees when they hear other stuff that their track might end up alongside. Strange Planet is stitched together like a Sci-Fi Rap scrapbook. Sourcing material, including vocal samples from film, radio, and record.
Who did you recruit to join your Space Force (sorry… I had to!) guest list of collaborators?
Here’s a list of all the features in order of when they recorded their tracks:
Magestik Legend: there’s two tracks with him on the album, “Run Run” was recorded in 2014 and “Hostile” in 2015. He is part of the group The Black Opera with Jamall Bufford, who appeared on Cinder Hill (Son of Sam album from 2017.)
Prince Po: his vocals are taken from a Son of Sam track that got scrapped. Recorded in 2015.
Boog Brown added her chorus to “Hostile” in May 2016, around the same time we started working on our joint album together.
Willie Evans, Jr. sent over his vocals for “Sandbag Veteran” on my birthday, 22nd May 2016. The beat was made out of samples from an old radio drama. What a great birthday present! Willie had featured on Cinder Hill with his Dumbtron partner, Paten Locke.
Joker Starr & Skriblah DanGogh are on a track called “The Beginning” [recorded] in November 2016. The beat is from my Beatles Hip-Hop album, An Adventure to Pepperland Through Rhyme & Space. I recorded with Skriblah (& Klashnekoff) a few times in early 2000’s and I knew Joker Starr through Genesis Elijah.
Rup recorded his track with Pete Cannon in London. He, also, recorded his track, “Ham for Leather,” from Brewing Up at the same session (December 2016.) I became friends with Rup through Andy Evil Sun when I lived in Brighton.
VVV (Juga-Naut, Cappo & Vandal Savage) recorded their track in January 2017. Around the same time, Juga-Naut recorded his “Acting Thinking Feeling” track from Brewing Up.
Paten Locke recorded his track, “Pig Meat,” in April 2017. I was lucky enough to meet Paten in 2015 at Blackpool Cricket Club before he did a show with Edan. Even though we only got to hang out for a short period of time, we had already created a friendship through music. So, there was a good connection; he invited me and the family to stay with him, if we were ever in Florida. I didn’t, actually, get to see his show with Edan properly, as there were major technical issues with the sound at the venue. Paten passed away in 2019. He will be forever missed by all that knew him.
King Kashmere recorded his track in May 2017. We had met in the past a few times and had a mutual friend, Arch Co. I’ve admired his approach for a long time and had been trying to get him on a track since my Breakin’ Bread days in the early 2000’s!
Skuff & Scorzayzee recorded their track in September 2017. Their beat was an unused one from [Wu-Tang vs. Jimi Hendrix] Black Gold. Skuff’s parts were recorded at Pete Cannon’s studio in the same session he recorded “Also” for Brewing Up. Scorzayzee came into a sixth form college I was working at to speak to students about his music and, also, to record a track with them. He’s a super-lovely, witty, all-‘round great guy and incredible rapper.
Lee Scott recorded his track [in] September 2017 after Kashmere put me in touch with him. He worked super-quick; I think it was the day after I sent him the beat! I’ve been really into his stuff over the past few years. There are quite a few slower beats on Strange Planet compared to my previous albums and I think that partly comes down to his influence.
Jehst came ‘round to my house in Todmorden to record his track in November 2017. He listened to hundreds of beats, picked one, wrote his verse, and recorded it in one take (he did a second take, but we preferred the first.) In an age where vocals get sent to me electronically, it was nice to actually get him in the studio. We first met in the early 2000’s and it turned out Jehst lived near where I grew up for a few years, so we had a few mutual friends.
Mr. Lif recorded his track in March 2018 after Paten Locke put me in touch with him. It’s great when you get people on your beats who you used to listen to a long time ago. “Madness In A Cup” is one of my favourite Mr. Lif tracks, so I was chuffed he referenced that.
HPBLK, who went under the name Gen Uchiha when his track was recorded in March 2018: his album, FYMO, is really good and inspired me to do some of the stutter effects on his track, “Allen Stranger.”
Kosyne (who put me in touch with HPBLK) recorded “Bounty Hunter On The Rise” in May 2018. Kosyne’s great; a man of many talents. Really supportive and creative. He writes great concept tunes and I get excited when I see an album that he features on.
Dillon recorded his track in October 2018. The album was already kind of formed at this point and Dillon listened to it all and created his track with the idea of it going near the end of the album. I think the first thing Dillon recorded for me was a track for the second Son of Sam album. He, also, featured on the Boog Brown album I produced.
billy woods recorded his track in March 2019. GingerSlim put me in touch with him. billy, also, sent me some acapellas and I ended up using one on my Inner Space album.
Denmark Vessey is on the album three times. His first one was on “Saltfish” with billy woods in May 2019. Then, “Ole” in August 2020 and, finally, “Where Were You?” which was the last track to be recorded for the album in September 2021. Denmark’s track, “System Animal,” featured on Cinder Hill and I remixed it on Inner Space, too.
Confucius MC’s vocals were recorded by Jehst in September 2019. This beat was taken from my Rough Versions, Vol. 3 (Brand Nubian Remixes) album. I’ve met Confucius a few times with Jehst and always got on really well with him.
Maddy recorded her track, which was originally intended for another project, in May 2020. I’ve been doing tracks with Maddy for a few years now and we have a bunch of unreleased material together.
How did the recording, production, creation, etc. processes differ while making a studio album like Strange Planet, as opposed to your more remix/mash-up centric projects?
I was responding to the vocals. I mean, I do that with remixes, too, but I was trying to connect the dots without giving too much/any specific direction to the emcees. I would consider any track for this album that had a “strangeness” to it, either in the beat or the lyrics. I started grouping them together. I’ve always liked inter-relationships between emcees, as quite often one feature leads me to another. There have been so many versions of this album; I thought I had it finished many times. It was a pretty slow process altogether (eight years from when the first songs were recorded, but most of it was created in the last five.) Delays were often waiting for the features to deliver or just waiting to have enough money to pay for them. Remix albums, I tend to make in under a year, as the vocals are all readily available to me.
How would you best describe the overall concept, storyline, and/or plot lines heard across Strange Planet’s sprawling 23-song tracklist?
It’s about Earth, feeling trapped, a rebellion, the underground movement, but, also, just people’s streams of consciousnesses. There are implied concepts such as aliens, The Apocalypse, dystopia, and the healing powers of music. There are many meanings in this album and I want you to listen to the album to discover them.
Where did you draw inspiration from while putting together the video for “Critical Status” featuring Mr. Lif?
The video was created by the talented Nick Farrimond. The footage for the video references a wide range of sources including 60’s sci-fi B-movies, bizarre psychedelic space adventures, and news reels of Finnish retro-futurist UFO-style houses; some of which were manufactured in my home town of Todmorden, (West Yorkshire, England) on the site where the local Morrison’s supermarket now stands. The footage is layered, zapped, warped, and shaped to create a new film that compliments the track perfectly. The eagle-eyed viewer will instantly recognise clips from Fantastic Planet and Alejandro Jodowrowsky’s Holy Mountain… if anyone can name any more from the video, I’ll be impressed—there’s some pretty wild stuff in there. The house I used to live in (where I recorded the track with Jehst) used to be owned by Alan Godfrey, the ex-police man who claimed to be abducted by aliens in 1980.
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Strange Planet is out Friday, March 4, and you can pre-order here, including on wax, CD and tape. Follow Tom Caruana on Twitter and Instagram.
Matt Horowitz has been a hip-hop fan ever since he first heard Wu-Tang Clan’s Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) back in the mid-90’s, which positively or negatively changed his life ever since, depending on who you ask. He single-handedly runs online music publication The Witzard, and has been fortunate enough to interview Eothen ‘Egon’ Alapatt, Guilty Simpson, Ice-T and Mr. X, Dan Ubick, Career Crooks’ Zilla Rocca & Small Professor, Cut Chemist, and J-Zone, amongst countless others. He enjoys writing about and listening to hip-hop, Punk/Hardcore, and Indie Rock on vinyl with his lovely wife, while drinking craft beer, red wine, or iced coffee. To paraphrase both Darko The Super and the Beastie Boys: “Already Dead fans, they want more of this… I’m a Witzard like my man Matt Horowitz!”. Follow Matt here.