Antarctica is an album by alternative band The Prayer Chain containing a collection of outtakes from the Mercury sessions and a selection of tracks from their last live show as a band.
Bassist Eric Campuzano says "we were asked to record some new jive to make Mercury more Christian. We recorded Sky High, Friend Or Foe, The Other Side of Heaven and Lose Yourself. What got dropped off the original record was Antarctica, Loverboy and Chalk."
Antarctica, Loverboy and Chalk were eventually released again on Humb which was the original cut of Mercury.
Superfree was the first song recorded when the band was trying to find a new sound for the album that would become Mercury, but was never in contention for the album.
The band played Cornerstone Festival halfway through the recording sessions for Mercury. Engineer Chris Colbert mixed an early version of Humb to play as the opener to their show. It's notable for the vocal being more out-of-focus than the album version, and the absence of the bass & drums interrupting the drone.
These 6 tracks were previously available on the limited release Mercurios but the band wanted to make the tracks more widely available.
The second half of the disc is the band's last live show before they disbanded, recorded 30 December 1995. Guitarist Andy Prickett had techinical problems with his pedal board, so not all of the tracks recorded that night were released.
Scott Stilleta of rock band Plankeye sang along on Crawl. The introduction of Grylliade features a sample of The Drummers of Burundi, who were an influence on Everett at the time. The introduction to Wrounde is Call To Prayer by Baaba Maal. It was a track from Passion - Sources, an album of music that was used to inspire Peter Gabriel in creating the soundtrack for The Last Temptation of Christ. The Prayer Chain have said these albums were influences on the making of Mercury.
In early versions of the CD, there is mixing error in Creole. Late in the song, the tracks appears to skip. Campuzano admits that when he listened to the final mix for approval, he was in a hurry so didn't notice the error and didn't think it was worthwhile giving the album a second listen, so it was over-looked. Later reprints corrected the error, but the digital version available through bandcamp still contains the error.
Tracklisting
- Antarctica
- Chalk
- Loverboy
- Friend Or Foe
- Superfree
- Humb (Chrissy's Cornerstone Premix)
- Wrounde (live)
- Waterdogs (live)
- Creole (live)
- Grylliade (live)
- Bendy Line (live)
- Crawl (live)
- Sky High (live)
- The Hollow (live)