Home Hear Now Hear This: Intercontinen7al | World Over EP

Now Hear This: Intercontinen7al | World Over EP

The international musical collective cross even more borders with their latest outing.

2025-01-03

Intercontinen7al continue to expand their musical and personal horizons with their scenic new sonic travelogue World Over — showcasing today on Tinnitist.

If there’s one word that’s often used to describe Intercontinen7al, it’s “groundbreaking.” And fittingly, the collaborative ensemble live up to that label once again with their latest release. The EP World Over is the first and only record of its kind: Each song on this release was assembled from instrumental elements that were recorded on all seven continents.

Virtually created and crafted over a period of four years, the ambitious EP circumnavigates styles and sounds as easily as it crosses literal borders. Beginning with the flamenco-tinged elegance of Puerto Aisen, the multi-faceted five-track effort undertakes a musical journey through folk-rock troubadourism (Night Shift), soothing bossa nova (Butterflies), psychedelic-rock majesty (The Chamber) and mellow ’70s-style prog-rock (Manor Hill).

The band’s own journey began in 2020 as a sonic experiment among a group of musicians in Maryland. Since then, it has evolved into an international accomplishment that has raised funds and awareness for a variety of causes — including their latest recipient Oxfam — even as it raises consciousness around the unversal, unifying language of music.

In March 2020, when COVID was impacting people around the globe and lockdowns had sidelined live music, members of the local Columbia band Toast (Matt Smith, Jamie Miller, Ben Gaither, Emily Betz and guest Becca Drayer) wanted to continue collaborating and playing together virtually. The band discovered the application BandLab, and a month later were sharing drum tracks, guitar riffs, and other ideas among themselves.

A few months later, the band recognized the potential of the app’s public community, and decided to publish their song ideas outside the band framework — unlocking them so that any BandLab user could contribute. Matt posted a grunge-inspired instrumental acoustic song tentatively called Aslin. Within days, multiple parts were submitted by artists, including North American Hope Gray’s backing vocals and South American Gustavo Prida’s lead vocals (in Spanish), transforming Aslin into No Somos De Este Lugar. The band continued this process, posting a blues idea by Matt and Jamie for external contributors; this soon evolved into When I’m Gone, with David Lee Rendon from North America on vocals and Robert James Shoveller from Australia on lead guitar.

That summer, Matt was walking when an idea struck him like a lightning bolt: What if the band adopted Foo Fighters’ Sonic Highways concept (recording with artists from different cities in the U.S.), but expanded it to include every continent? Intercontinen7al wer born, with the 7 inspired by the Tool song 7empest.

The band contacted friends, former bandmates and family (like bassists Devin Heritage and Alex Burke), and used BandLab to establish additional connections (including guitarist Josh Pearlson of Africa). The band also reviewed musicians’ profiles and comments to recruit other participants, such as Nerse of Asia. Europe is represented by musicians such as Poland’s Marcin Nawrocki, who was recruited after flagging one of the band’s song ideas for potential collaboration, and the talented vocalist Rieneke from the Netherlands. To recruit the two musicians from Antarctica, Matt contacted numerous active research stations in September 2020 to determine if there were researchers that happened to be musicians on site, and successfully recruited Aymar de Lichervelde and Stijn Thoolen. The result was the epic progressive rock song Manor Hill, returning here in remastered form.

Since the release of their debut record, the band has continued to expand, adding such talented artists such as Andrasta, Bubbas Bentlass and Darren Fellows from the United Kingdom, Jukerok from Egypt, Miami73 from France, Rousevision from Germany, Yaroslav from Ukraine and Ruslan from Russia. The 21 musicians who collaborated worldwide to create music for World Over are listed below. The bandmembers are already working on ideas for their farewell album Intercontinen7al Vol. 7, slated for release in the coming months.