Bringing It Back

Comprising former members of IQ and Frost*, Rain have approached the challenges of creating their "difficult" second album with both passion and flair. But, as drummer Andy Edwards and keyboard player Rob Groucutt reveal, Radio Silence wasn't without its stressors and things could have been very different had their 2020 debut not been so well accepted...

- Rich Wilson

Andy Edwards is the type of person who could engage in a lively debate on the virtues of prog for several hours. Indeed, it's those opinions that have shaped the content of his burgeoning YouTube channel, and while delving into that would be an intriguing conversation, it's Rain's Radio Silence that's our current focus.

The album is the follow-up to their debut, Singularity, a recording that, despite being somewhat tricky to categorise, appealed to a significant number of fans, as Edwards explains.

"We felt that we'd delivered a real full-on prog album with songs about magicians with odd time signatures and with a conceptual continuity," he says. "When it came out, I think a lot grooves,” recalls Groucutt. “Then Andy pulled those together into some sort of structure and people started developing their parts. So pretty much everything originated from a combined jam. There wasn’t a conscious thought process of: what are we doing here, are we trying to force it in a direction? We’re constantly trying to do something different and be progressive in the true sense of the word. We’ve four different people coming in with such different histories and approaches that it has become quite automatic for us to be doing something different every time. The idea of us creating something that is quite recognisable as Rain is important for us too.”

All of which implies a perfectly stress-free period of writing, but was that truly the case? A visible smirk appears on Edwards’ face, between mouthfuls of a chicken biryani, before he invites Groucutt to comment on any internal fractiousness.