Diagnosed HIV positive in 1999 and hospitalised with AIDS defining complications in the summer of 2000; twenty years on from his diagnosis Oli Spleen worked with Nick Hudson and others to create 'Night Sweats & Fever Dreams', a fevered, hallucinogenic mirror to the desperate times when the threat of death at the hands of AIDS was a terrifying reality for many gay men.

“With ‘Night Sweats and Fever Dreams’, Oli Spleen has once again produced a touching, tender and highly personal album. Alongside collaborator Nick Hudson (The Academy of Sun) he has concocted a heady mix of songs, some new, the others radical reworkings of material written over the past 20 years. Dark, mysterious and wonderfully atmospheric, Spleen’s fractured vocals are beautifully complimented by Hudson’s lush arrangements. Is it too early to call time on the race for the Best Album of 2020?”

- Darryl W. Bullock author of “David Bowie Made Me Gay, 100 Years of LGBT+ Music”.

“I visited him in hospital, there when his lungs were filled, his thin legs, gaping hollow eyes, unable to swallow or inhale without wincing with pain, and coughing, terrible coughing, leading to vomiting and more coughing. He was papery and he weakly cracked jokes about his condition - his swollen heart meaning he was capable of more loving, his hallucinatory tigers. It reminded me of Blake’s 'Tyger Tyger, Burning Bright' and I was wholly affected by this burning bright thing now lying drained and grey in a hospital bed, a gaunt brown-eyed boy in elderly pyjamas, an oxygen mask and drip.”

- Salena Godden, author of “Mrs Death Misses Death” in the foreword to Spleen’s 2003 book “Depravikazi”.

Oli Spleen is alive and well and currently living in quarantine in a shed somewhere just outside of Hastings. His condition is no longer life threatening and he has had an undetectable viral load for over sixteen years.

This album is dedicated to all those who didn't survive.
credits
released June 1, 2020

Tracks one to five and eight by Oli Spleen & Nick Hudson
(The Bedroom, Just a Dream, Waste and Kamikaze were originally conceived by Spleen with The Flesh Happening, Screwed Love was originally conceived by Spleen with Karl Off)
Produced by Forbes Coleman
Co-produced by Nick Hudson
Recorded by Forbes Coleman at AudioBeach Studios
Mixed by Forbes Coleman at AudioBeach Studios
Mastered by Forbes Coleman at AudioBeach Studios
Piano and arrangement on tracks six and seven by Tristram Arnold
Strings by Lizzy Carey
Clarinet reed on track six by Merlin Shepherd
Cover art by Ash Babb from an idea by Nick Hudson