“I’d been wanting to do an album for ages, but I didn’t really know how long the whole process was supposed to take,” recalled the invisible member of the band Faithless and one of its founders Rollo Armstrong. “When it came down to it, it was an intense experience, all very quick. It took 17 days because I marked them all down in my diary.”
Faithless was originally conceived as a band of one record: Salva Mea, which they released in the spring of 1995. There were many such one-hit wonders on Rollo's label and beyond. But the participants liked working together and decided to record an LP. By that time, Faithless had gathered an interesting team of bright creative units: Sister Bliss wrote music, Maxi Jazz rapped and wrote the lyrics, while Rollo defined the vision and sound of the group, distributed tasks and, most importantly, said what the next track would be about. For example, he told Jamie Catto that he wanted a ballad about a guy who could make any woman fall in love with him in a day. In a couple of hours, Jamie came up with Angeline. “To me, major chords are horrific sell-outs. All you need to top them is some silly singer singing silly lyrics. And I absolutely hate inane lyrics. Hate them!” Reverence is a rebuke to everyone who considered Faithless to be an exclusively club band.