'And there are two insane dogs on the premises. 'We were trying to keep the grandmas alive and keep the kids from going crazy from virtual school,' he explains. 'All of a sudden, it turned this time of isolation, anxiety and fear of both the American political scene and an open-ended global plague into a life-raft and an anti-depressant,' he says, 'and it became a way through the storm.' And an escape too. Recording riffs into his phone and sending them around the globe, his world began to open up once more. But I can hit this red button on an app…'Ī moment that he describes as like facing a long drought of creativity suddenly began to look more fertile territory. 'I heard Kanye had recorded some of his vocals on the voice memo app on his phone,' he says today, 'And I thought, well I can't work a studio, and I can't run a mixing board or use Pro Tools. 'I'm not an engineer!' he grins, before describing the moment where he realised the potential in his hand.

Even despite having a recording studio at home, Tom laughs as he describes his complete lack of ability to work it. And, with plans afoot for a follow-up even before it was released, it could only take the hard reset of a global lockdown to derail it. Flay, Steve Aoki, Marcus Mumford and Killer Mike, it always felt like merely the first chapter in a new era of sound exploration. Fusing his trademark futuristic riff sounds with EDM and artists as varied as K. The opening 'The Atlas Underground' record, released back in 2018, sought to continue pushing electric guitar music forwards in the manner that Morello has always hungered for. 'Yeah, I have to thank Kanye West for this…' begins Tom as we catch up with him over Zoom, laughing as he delivers perhaps one of the most unexpected things you will hear all year. Facing up to an extended period away from music, inspiration came from the unlikeliest of sources. For a man that's restlessly sought to create and perform for his entire musical career, it was a huge shock to the system - and that's even before beginning to tackle the challenges of getting through a global killer pandemic. For Tom Morello, a life of creativity and performance came screeching to an abrupt halt and, for the first time in forty years, he was facing up to an immediate future that held no shows and no recording sessions in sight. Lockdown turned everything upside down for pretty much everyone on the planet last year, and being a global rock superstar gave little extra protection.

Red button shirt like tom morello