ALL LIGHT by United Freedom Collective
Continuing their rich vein of form, United Freedom Collective — the group co-founded by Robbie Redway, Mathieu Seynaeve and WaiFung Tsang — are back with a new single ‘ALL LIGHT’ on Maribou State’s Dama Dama imprint.
The track was born of a writing retreat in Cornwall (in the UK’s south-west) and features vocals from Somali-born, UK-based singer/songwriter FACESOUL (real name Faisal Salah) who previously collaborated with UFC on the single ‘MERCY’ from “Am Ta EP” (2022)
“We would walk every day together and notice the changes in light, changes in the plants with explosions of flowers happening everywhere,” explains Robbie. “It was an optimistic and beautiful time. We wrote an instrumental that had quite a calming intro into a big percussive drop and Faisal came in with this simple, direct story of the sun coming up in the morning and suddenly turning everything into life, inspired by the scenes around us at the time.”
Having launched their live show at the end of last year with sold-out gigs in London and hometown Margate, the band are prepping for shows with Woodburner in London on 15th July followed by Blue Dot Festival (Manchester) on 21st July and Lost Village Festival (Lincolnshire) (24-27th August).
In their other fields, WaiFung and his team at Onaya Science have been developing their study in the Peruvian Amazon into how Ayahuasca can be used as a treatment for PTSD in veterans, and Mathieu continues his work in psychedelic therapy research, for which Robbie has been curating the music.
As an ever-expanding collective, collaborating with artists such as Jordan Stephens, the aforementioned FACESOUL, Falle Nioke, The Social Singing Choir (formed in 2017 – no auditions, no need of previous experience, just a place in the community to sing together), Eliza Shaddad and William Rees, the sound of United Freedom Collective has continued to develop into something wider than the imagination.
With Robbie’s beachside studio in Margate at its heart they aim to create a framework for effortless production and collaboration, characterised by a fluid workflow and minimal emphasis on interference or re-takes. It’s a holistic approach that allows the music to take on a transcendental quality, with the sound evolving into something wider than the imagination. Collectively drawing on the clinical work of Seynaeve and Tsang while also taking influence from worlds of Zen Taoism, Chinese plant medicines, Jungian analysis, headless way meditations, yoga, indigeneity, Amazonian and psychedelic cultures, icaros — traditional Amazonian Icaros chants usually sung at the opening of an ayahuasca ceremony — worldwide healing traditions, the nature of birds & trees and Buddhism to name a few.
'United Freedom Collective is about the space from which we create, from which things arise. It is a shared space, where we can all meet, if we find access to it.'