 |
| Big Big Train with Rob Aubrey (photo by Amy Mumford) |
The Far Skies EP is generously proportioned (about 41 minutes of music) and features the following track listing:
Master of Time
Fat Billy Shouts Mine
British Racing Green
Brambling
The Wide Open Sea
Master of Time is a cover of an Anthony Phillips song. Anthony and Mike Rutherford had originally planned to record Master of Time for inclusion on one of our favourite albums, The Geese and the Ghost, but ran out of time during the album sessions. A demo of the song appeared on the recent re-issue of The Geese and the Ghost. We thought it was a beautiful song which deserved a full band treatment and so decided to record our first ever cover. Ant has heard the BBT version of Master of Time and has given us his blessing and we do hope that we've done the song full justice.
Fat Billy Shouts Mine was originally part of a suite of music for The Underfall Yard album. We didn't get chance to finish recording the song in time for the album and so are pleased to be able to release it as part of the Far Skies EP.
British Racing Green and Brambling feature a lot of music within concise arrangements. We are very proud of these two songs which both tell the story of doomed relationships.
The EP concludes with the 17 minute The Wide Open Sea. This is a very different epic for us, very unlike our previous songs of this sort of length. It tells a story of Jacques Brel and is, I think, one of the best things we've done.
The Big Big Train line-up on Far Skies is:
Andy Poole
Dave Gregory
David Longdon
Greg Spawton
Nick D'Virgilio
and the EP also features Danny Manners on double bass, Jon Barry on guitar and Martin Orford on keyboards.
More news soon.
10 comments:
hooray!
sounds great! :-)
Great news. I've made a space in the rack for it already!
Carl
I quake in anticipation! October can't come soon enough, as far as I'm concerned!
Great! Looking forward to your new EP:-)
1 d&y w3'r3 b0rn... on &n0th3r we dye....what li3s in betw33n is unimp0rt&nt in this li3........
J&$P3R 3UDD
M1N3$TRY 0f $t3&M
Hi Greg,
October will be a very good month. IQ and Porcupine Tree are visiting Germany, Grobschnitt will play several gigs too, and there will be a new BBT album (41 minutes IS album length). It can't get better!
BTW, I've decided to make me a BBT T-Shirt due to lack of merchandising in your shop. ;)
Sers, MatD
You're right: we do need to get around to doing some t-shirts, Mat. I'll talk to the chaps and we'll have a think about design etc.
Enjoy the PT and IQ gigs.
Thanks,
ATM I'm looking forward to the Loreley Festival next weekend.
How about BBT playing at the "Night Of The Prog", perhaps next year? :)
Sers, MatD
Greg, is this the same 'British Racing Green' that evolved into parts of Bard? Or is it a complete re-working/new song?
Hello Mat and Steve.
BRG goes back as far as English Boy Wonders. We found it too depressing for that album (it's not a very cheerful tune. Subsequently, one or two 'echoes' of the song found their way onto Bard.
More recently,we asked Nick to work up a drum part for the original tune and then handed it over to David to re-work it.
In a nutshell, the words and the tune are the same as the original song but the arrangement is very different (we have allowed ourselves to show a bit of our love for Prefab Sprout and 10cc.)
An early version of Brambling was written at the time of The Difference Machine and a very short ambient section from The Wide Open Sea also features on that album.
As for gigs, they are on the agenda but we have some substantial recording projects to complete first.
Cheers
Greg
Post a Comment