Continuing from Part Two, the release of the Moody Blues compilation CD happened in 2006, nearly two years after the scheduled date! Our contribution was not wildly different from the original, but the guitar solo was! We are on CD3, track 5. The whole album is very good, by the way, and a worthwhile investment if you like the Moody Blues and / or some of the bands on the disc. Read the full details in the discography.
Soon after recording Driftwood, work began on our next album Studies in Heartbreak. This was, perhaps, our most complex and difficult album, featuring all manner of sonic goodness. Released in June 2005, it is one of my personal favourites.
In August 2006 we released our next album, the live sounding and ridiculously pompous Nowhere Left to Turn, featuring 4 very long tracks and a stellar voice over from Stephen Lyons. This one divided opinions, to say the least. It is quite raw (for us), too.
And here we are now in 2007 with the release of the superb (well, I think so!) Too Many Goodbyes. This features the return of Ken Senior on vocals and the whole thing is effortlessly melodic with plenty of twists and turns in the music.
From then until now, really, things went quiet as I devoted my time (not that I had much choice in the matter!) to the raising of my new son: my first and, so far, only child. It’s true to say that there is nothing you can undertake that can quite prepare you for just how hard it is being a parent. On the flip side, it really is a joy, too.
Anyway, as time allowed – and with judicious use of headphones – I continued to record and write what will become the next full length album. If you look at our discography, you can’t help but notice how prolific I once was. Oh happy days. Some of the new material I had been working on became the MP3 only release Vignettes, released in 2009. The rest of the songs, a double albums worth (!), will show up on CD at the end of 2010 or the start of 2011. It is mostly finished, in terms of recording, with just a few overdubs to do. It sounds fantastic and will surprise and delight in equal measure. As usual, it sounds like nothing we have ever done before but still sounds like us!
I also have plans to release another EP, Vignettes II, featuring improvised music. I have written, if that’s the right word, a lovely little piece called Flurry that ebbs and flows to a randomly changing rhythm. I intend to overdub some guitar later this week before I declare it fit purpose.
In addition to the new material being worked on, the website has been revamped, improved and redesigned several times, finally settling on the current iteration early 2010. One of the major tasks was to get all the sections from previous versions (reviews, radio, album of the month etc) integrated into the site and I finally achieved that a couple of months ago. So, as of right now, I am exactly where I want to be with the site. Any future changes will be design led.