Background

I remember taking Rob Bathurst’s original instrumental demo on holiday to Australia and I wrote most (if not all) of this lyric on the plane home.

It’s an approach I have used several times to put myself in the place of a biblical character and thought “what would it have been like? How would I have felt?”. In fact it’s mostly the way I read the bible – to forget that I know what happened next and so to understand what was going on in the moment. Jesus calmed the storm (Matthew 8:23-27) and I wonder how the events would have played out to one of the fishermen disciples.

As a footnote, I remember we played a delightful prank on Simon, Salt Solution’s bassist. He wasn’t able to make the final mixing of this track and once we’d got the mix we wanted to we put his bass track though a delay and his backing vocal though a pitch changer. Both were set to zero at the start of the track but we gradually turned the dials as the song progressed. The result was him apparently going further out of time and out of tune as the track went on. We gave it to him passing it off as the final mix… a great wheeze! … and you can listen to it below.

Movie

The song ‘Lightning’, recorded at Salt Solution‘s set at the Kingston Festival 1992.

Play Now

Listen to ‘Lightning’ from Salt Solution’s album ‘Arctic Frosties‘.

 

There was also a mix of this song made as a practical joke on Simon our bass player. With a delay to put his bass out of time and a pitch changer to turn his backing vocals flat this is an initially suble effect that turns into a painful  experience by the end. It was a delicious wheeze. You can enjoy it below.