Steve Cradock: ‘A Sound Track to an Imaginary Movie is quite a meditative album’

The shows with Weller, which wound their way across Britain in two legs last autumn and springtime, had been “outstanding”, he reports. “The first gig we did was Coventry and I remember it was incredible, the crowd and the way the group were feeling,” he says. “It had never felt like that before, it was extraordinary, and then the last tour we just finished in the same way it was a really high standard, it was a great set we were playing and just amazing crowds, beautiful people.”

A Sound Track to an Imaginary Movie is Cradock’s fourth solo album, but musically it differs quite substantially from his previous, more song-based releases The Kundalini Target, Peace City West and Travel Wild – Travel Free.

“I am really proud of it,” says the 52-year-old guitarist. “I think it’s a really beautiful thing. It’s quite a meditative album and captures all the things that were happening here (in his home in rural Devon) in 2020. It sounds magical.”

He is full of praise for the “amazing” mixing skills of Enrico Berto, which he feels gave the album a 3D quality. “On the tracks on the first side you’ve got what the track is then it goes into a dub version of what the main melody is and I think he did a great job on that.”

Lapis Lazuli and Quercitron, the first two tracks on the album, arrived “as you hear them” on the album, Cradock says. “I just went into the studio and that music flowed,” he explains. “When that happened it was a nice feeling and it got me thinking ‘what can I do?’”

In the ensuing weeks over the summer of 2020 he started assembling a full album of instrumentals. “I went through some old demos,” he says, explaining that one of them was Sarcoline, a track featuring saxophone by the late Brian Travers of UB40. “That was recorded around the time I was recording Peace City West ten years ago, and then Brian added the sax on it maybe five years ago.

“There were a couple of tracks like that, that I’d had for quite a while, and then the piano pieces on the second side of it are new.”

Influences on the album included jazz, classical composers such as Eric Satie, Ennio Morricone and Philip Glass, and the lounge pop of Burt Bacharach. Cradock says publicity suggesting he had become a fan of BBC Radio 3 was intended light-heartedly, adding: “I’m a fan of jazz and classical music but I’d never class myself as being able to play it, it’s above me.

“Although it does (have elements of both), it’s still indie to me. I don’t know what it is.”

The guitarist’s fondness for John Coltrane’s album A Love Supreme merged with his wife Sally’s interest in sound therapy. Hence the use of gongs and Tibetan singing bowls in side two opener Dragon’s Blood. “My wife is a gong master and she does gong bathing so it’s a thing that I’m immersed in anyway because it all happens at our house. Again, because the album is quite meditative, I thought why not extend it out to that. It’s using frequencies to heal, that’s what gong bathing does, it’s an extraordinary thing, it’s very powerful and ti’s amazing. So that to me felt part of this record.

“And the Coltrane thing, I was reading a book about the making of the album while I making the record. It’s not even Coltrane, really, it’s about using repetition and it almost became a drone. That interested me. I don’t think I’ve really done it before.”

Besides Sally and the Cradocks’ son Cassius, the other players on the album who include cellist Jess Cox, Rob Newton from the Stone Foundation on congas and The Specials’ organist Nikolaj Larson and trombonist Tim Smart are all friends that he has worked with in recent years. “I produced an album by Leah Weller (Paul’s eldest daughter), Tim plays a lot on that,” he says. “He would help out, I’d send him files and he would send them back. That’s always a joy working with him and Nikolaj.

“Then there were some family friends, Hugo Levingston and his daughter Lila, they would just come by for a weekend or so and we’d end up playing music, and they would play over certain tracks, and then there was Jess Cox who I know from the Q Strings quartet, she’s worked with Ocean Colour Scene and The Specials, and she would do the same thing – I would send her an acoustic motif and she would play some cello on it and send it back. It was great to work with those people, and it was a new way of doing it as well because the lockdown threw many things in the way but I was still able to get things together, which was great.”

This summer Cradock will be on the road again with Weller, Ocean Colour Scene and The Specials. Ocean Colour Scene have also just announced a December tour which includes O2 Academy Leeds on December 16. However the chance of new material from the band is unlikely, Cradock says. “There hasn’t been any for ten years,” he says. “I don’t know what would change it for us to do it, but I think that people just enjoy the songs that we’ve got.”

A Sound Track to an Imaginary Movie is out on Friday June 10. www.stevecradock.com