Hallowed be thy prog

Ignatius Insight, which is a Catholic website, has published an article on prog rock by Professor Bradley Birzer. Professor Birzer has a very interesting perspective on the genre and the article is a terrific read.

Further commentary on the article can be found on The American Culture website.

Goodbye to the Age of Steam (2011 re-issue)

Completing the trio of BBT-related releases over the last few weeks is the re-issue of our first album, Goodbye to the Age of Steam, which is now on sale in the BBT shop (and will be available from Amazon UK and USA from May 3rd).

Goodbye to the Age of Steam was originally released on the GEP label in 1994 and has been unavailable for the last few years. It isn't representative of where we are now as a band and it wasn't something we intended to go back to, but Rob Aubrey had a window in his schedule last year and offered to re-mix it from the master tapes. The 1994 version of the album was recorded and mixed on a very tight budget and the opportunity to achieve the best possible sound quality with a complete re-mix was something we could not resist.

We have also added three bonus tracks to the album to ensure the 2011 version of Goodbye to the Age of Steam is a value-for-money release. Firstly, there is an extended version of Losing Your Way, featuring an instrumental section which was edited out of the album version; then a track called Far Distant Thing which we recorded for a radio session in 1993, and finally, an instrumental track called Expecting Dragons which reworks some of the album themes and motifs and which features the band's modern line-up.

Those of you who are familiar with the original release will also notice that we have used new artwork for the re-issue. The painting for the 1994 cover was sold at auction and we have no idea where it is. So we asked our artist, Jim Trainer, to paint some new images. Cracking job he made of it too (the re-issue features a 12-page booklet which includes a number of Jim's paintings.)

So, there it is. We've now completed our programme of re-issues and, from this point on, it is all about the future as we continue work on English Electric and start thinking about some gigs.

In the meantime, I hope you'll find something to enjoy on Goodbye to the Age of Steam. It's certainly not up there with The Underfall Yard or Far Skies Deep Time, but it's part of the Big Big Train story.



 

Sean Filkins - War and Peace and Other Short Stories

Sean Filkins, Big Big Train vocalist on the Gathering Speed and The Difference Machine albums has just released a solo album. I haven't heard the CD yet, but there is a track streaming on Sean's site (where it's also available for purchase for a tenner, which includes P&P.)

David in Dusk magazine

David was interviewed by Mario Giammetti for the December issue of Dusk (the excellent and longstanding Italian Genesis magazine.)

Mario has now kindly made the interview available online and in English. It's a very interesting read and is well worth checking out. There is a link to it on David's blog.

Tin Spirits

The first Tin Spirits' CD,Wired to Earth, is out now. It's a beautiful album of guitar-based prog which avoids the well-trodden road of Nu-Prog or Nu-Metal heaviness and, instead, establishes its own path. My understanding is that the album has been printed up as a limited edition to start off with so I strongly recommend popping over to the Tin Spirits' website and buying a copy while it's available (it costs just £6.95). Tin Spirits is:  Dave Gregory (guitars), Daniel Steinhardt (guitars and vocals), Doug Mussard (drums and vocals) and Mark Kilminster (vocals and bass).

Tubular baebes

This is already going viral, so I thought I'd do my bit:

Video review of Far Skies

Liveprog has developed an innovative approach to CD reviews which, I think, works very well. Here is Marcel Haster's review of Far Skies:

Other reviews can be found on the Liveprog website.

In the Cage at Abbey Road

Many thanks to Mark Hornsby who allowed us to sit in on a session at Abbey Road last week. The session was memorable for a number of reasons; firstly, simply because it was at Abbey Road; secondly it involved recording a full 48-piece orchestra, which isn't something you get to see every day; thirdly, because the orchestra were recording versions of In the Cage and Kevin Gilbert's beautiful A Long Day's Life.

The recordings were for future re-issues of Nick D'Virgilio's Rewiring Genesis and Kevin Gilbert's The Shaming of the True.

Studio One is the largest recording space in Abbey Road and has been used for many film scores (including the Lord of the Rings). I assumed we'd spend most of the time in the control room (the picture above is from the control room of Studio One looking out into the recording room) but we were able to wander in and watch the orchestra in action (mobile phones turned off, of course, the mere thought of my phone ringing during the middle of a take was almost too much to bear.)

So, we were 'up close' as the players turned over the score for the first time and began warming up and practising the tricky bits.

Within a few minutes the orchestra tried a run-through of the first track, In the Cage, to sort out any teething problems. It was a spine-tingling moment when the 'pulse' at the start of the song began and the opening chords drifted in. The arrangement was absolutely beautiful; faithful to the original but using the full scope of the orchestra to enhance the composition.

Banks' keyboard solo was played, for the most part, by the 20 violinists (they took it in their stride; all of the musicians were from London's top orchestras). The last flurry of notes from the solo was played on brass instruments and this proved a particularly challenging section.

After a couple more complete run-throughs, In the Cage was pretty much in the can. There was time to focus on two or three of the more difficult sections and these were recorded in short takes just to ensure that everything was as it should be.

Next up was A Long Day's Life. Two separate versions were recorded and, again, the arrangements and performances were simply stunning.

During breaks in the session, we were able to pop into Studio Two (where most of The Beatles albums were done) and Studio Three (this was Pink Floyd's main recording studio.)

We were also pleased to find out that the Pro-Tools operator for Mark's session had recorded Sigur Ros' Ara Batur from the Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust album. This was a huge session involving the band plus the London Sinfionietta and the London Oratory Boys Choir.

Prior to recording Ara Batur, Sigur Ros had tuned up un-announced to have a look around the studios. I understand their response to seeing the various recording rooms was, like ours, one of awe.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I'm a bit of a history buff, and Abbey Road elicits the same feelings as any of the major historic buildings in England. We walk into the rooms and we look up and we wonder: 'what have these walls seen?'

So this is Christmas...

Left-to-right: Nick D'Virgilio, Dave Gregory, Greg Spawton, Rob Aubrey,
 David Longdon, Andy Poole. Photo by Neil Palfreyman

And what have we done?

Bloody loads, actually. In three days of work at Aubitt studios we recorded the drums for 15 songs (over 100 minutes of music). It's all good stuff too, no 'leftovers'. About an hour of music (perhaps slightly longer) will feature on the new album English Electric, which leaves lots of additional material for our forthcoming retrospective / introduction to... / 'best' of... / rarities collection, which will be called Station Masters.

We filmed some of the recordings so will try to post some video excerpts in the next few weeks. Nick was in fine form, as you will see.

After completing the sessions we had time for a band photo shoot in Winchester and also had a very nice curry with Mr Martin Orford who showed absolutely no signs of retreating from his musical retirement (it does seem that Martin's keyboard solos on Fat Billy will be his last recordings.)

Enjoy your New Year celebrations, wherever you are. We are looking forward to a very productive (and progressive) 2011.

Twelve Days of Progmas

Christmas is coming fast and, this year, we will be spending much of it at Aubitt, recording drums for our next album English Electric (plus some other tracks which we will be releasing on another CD in the next year or so). The reason for recording over the Christmas period is that Nick has a few days in England prior to the opening of Cirque du Soleil's Totem in London.

If we get the chance, we'll upload some dispatches from the studio, but, until then, I would just like to draw your attention to this rather fabulous video by Somewhere celebrating the twelve days of progmas (hat tip: Dave Gregory).

Jacques Brel

Jacques Brel is the subject of our song The Wide Open Sea from the Far Skies EP. For those who are not familiar with Brel, this astounding performance of Ne Me Quitte Pas is a good introduction:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za_6A0XnMyw&feature=related

Illegal downloading

I need to get this off my chest.

I'm relatively relaxed about illegal downloading of our music. It's irritating that so many people feel they can help themselves to our music, but I'm not convinced that those downloads would convert directly into sales if the internet was magicked away. And the internet has been the tool that we've used to grow the sales of the band, so we've taken the view that you need to take the rough with the smooth.

Our approach in the last few years has been to reduce the temptation to illegally download our music. Therefore, we:

• keep our CD prices as low as possible and offer 'bundles' in our shop
• make our music freely available to listen to on streaming sites such as as Spotify and Last FM
• work with internet radio stations to make our music available via podcasts
• offer full-length free downloads and streamed songs on our own website
• try to make our CD's a desirable product (we spend a lot of time and money on design)
• emphasise our independence from record labels (in other words, if you take our music, you are stealing directly from the musician, not some amorphous record company)

Our hope is that this approach makes a difference and, if our growth in sales is an indicator, then it has. But occasionally, I do find myself getting dispirited. The release of the Far Skies EP has caused me to be especially downhearted.

With Far Skies we wanted to reward our loyal fans who have joined our mailing list over the years. So, we offered the CD ahead of general release to people on our mailing list. There is, of course, a benefit to the band in this approach as many more people have subsequently joined our mailing list, meaning we are better able to target direct sales at individuals in the future (rather than distribute through dealers when we sell at wholesale prices.)

Unfortunately, within just a few days of the pre-orders being sent out, Far Skies started popping up on numerous torrent sites. What really pisses me off is that it is highly likely that somebody on our mailing list took it on themselves to upload our music (the only other possibility is that somebody who received a promo copy uploaded the CD. However, we have sent very few promos out for Far Skies, and none ahead of the pre-orders).

One of the advantages of being in charge of our own label is that we can keep a proper track of sales. For the pre-order of Far Skies we have a spreadsheet which includes the name of everyone who has ordered the CD. The CD isn't available from anybody else at the moment so this spreadsheet should include everyone who has bought the CD so far. I was reading some of the early reviews and ratings of Far Skies on Progarchives the other day and noticed that some of the most recent ratings had been from people that do not appear to have bought the CD.

Now, I have no intention of besmirching these people; maybe they received the CD as a gift, or borrowed a copy from a friend, so there is a reason that they have been able to rate our music without appearing on a database of people who have bought it. Or maybe they are judging it after hearing the music on a podcast or internet radio station; in which case, fair enough I suppose (although passing comment on an album when you haven't got access to the music in an uncompressed format, and don't have the artwork and the lyrics in front of you is a bit rum.) But if any of them has given a rating to the album after downloading the music from a torrent site, now that would be bloody cheeky.

If there is anybody reading this who has downloaded music from us illegally, please visit our shop and think about making a purchase. We are selling 41 minutes of new music on Far Skies for just £6 (which includes shipping), so it's not like we're driving people to the download sites with unreasonable prices.

We are an entirely independent band and everything we earn from the music goes straight back into the band. Listeners should at least reflect on that before taking our music.

Far Skies CD's

All pre-orders for the Far Skies EP received before the 25th October have been posted today (with the exception of signed copies - those will ship next week.)

We support our little rural Post Office by shipping all our sales through them and, as I suspected, we overwhelmed them a bit today. However, they worked hard to get all the packets stamped up and I think that they were all done in time for the last post.

Orders we received in the last couple of days will be sent tomorrow or Monday.

The International Prog Rock Show (BBT special)

On October 24th, The International Prog Rock Show broadcast a BBT special to celebrate the release of the Far Skies Deep Time EP. The show features an in depth interview with Andy Poole, a selection of songs from our back catalogue and a preview of all of the songs from Far Skies. The show is now available for download (there is a link to the download page for the show on the IPRS blog.)

Many thanks to Rick Blake and Frank Marceau for making this happen.

Busy week

We're busy packaging pre-orders for the Far Skies Deep Time EP at the moment. We are a little bit behind as we have also had to grab a couple of days in the studio this week to finally finish off the Goodbye to the Age of Steam remix and bonus tracks (that's me, above, recording Expecting Dragons last night.)

The reason for the untimely studio booking is that VAT is increasing again in January so we want to get Age of Steam pressed up before Christmas to save ourselves a bit of money.

We'll be finishing Age of Steam today and after a celebratory curry will get back to the packaging and shipping. All pre-orders should be on their way by Saturday at the latest.

Goodbye to the Age of Steam is NOT being re-issued on 18th October

It's been pointed out to me that Amazon are advertising a re-issue of our first album Age of Steam with availability from 18th October.

I'm assuming that this is just an error on Amazon's part, but if it's not, then I don't know who has taken it upon themselves to re-issue our music. The rights were given back to us by GEP a few years back and we have the master tapes in our possession.

Our re-issue is due in the spring next year. It's been completely re-mixed and re-mastered and has bonus tracks and new artwork. If this imposter re-issue is for real rather than a mirage, I do urge you to ignore it and wait for the official version.

The Weirdstone of Brisingamen

Today is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Alan Garner's The Weirdstone of Brisingamen.

When I was seven years old, our English teacher sat us down (legs crossed) on the tiled floor of our classroom. She read the first chapter of The Weirdstone of Brisingamen to the class. We were, to a boy and girl, spellbound. Then she shut the book up and told us to finish it for ourselves. I rushed straight off to the library and nabbed a copy; and that was the day I became a lover of books.

Hats off to you, Mr Garner.

Far Skies Deep Time EP pre-order

As some of you have noticed, we've started sending emails out to the mailing list with EP pre-order details.

Please be patient if you are expecting an email and haven't received one yet as we have several thousand to send and they are going in batches over the next few days. If you haven't heard from us within the next 10 days, then it will be worth checking by emailing us at:

bigbigtrain@hotmail.co.uk

The European Perspective: Far Skies Deep Time Exclusive

On September 25th, David 'Wilf' Elliott's The European Perspective show on the Dividing Line network featured an interview with David Longdon as well as an exclusive broadcast of the Far Skies Deep Time EP.

The show is now available to listen to online. There are two options; you can hear just the BBT bit here, or you can hear the whole 4 hour show (which includes the BBT bit as well as some very tasty music from other bands) here.

Just a reminder that the EP will be released on the 25th October and for the first two months (until Christmas Day, in fact) will only be available to buy if you are on the BBT mailing list. It is not too late to join said list and this can be easily be achieved by clicking here and following the instructions (if you've bought CD's directly from us before, you should already be on the list.)

We will start sending emails to people on the mailing list (with ordering information) in the next couple of days.

Far Skies Deep Time - insight

More insight on the forthcoming Far Skies Deep Time EP at David Longdon's blog.

The Underfall Yard on Spotify

The Underfall Yard is now available on the wonderful Spotify.

New CD coming soon: Far Skies Deep Time (EP)

Big Big Train with Rob Aubrey (photo by Amy Mumford)

We've finished recording our new EP and will shortly be back in the studio to mix and master it. The plan at the moment is to release Far Skies Deep Time in late October. There will be no pre-order campaign and initially it will only be available to those who are on our mailing list (if you've bought a CD directly from us in the past and haven't changed your email address recently, then you will feature on that list.)

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.

The Resurgence of Prog

Interesting new article on prog in The Guardian. Read it here.

In search of vintage sounds

Andy, firing up the Quattro

We've been struggling to replicate a couple of the keyboard sounds we used on Age of Steam and had decided we just had to accept the use of substitute sounds in one or two places.Then we found out that Martin Orford (who co-produced Age of Steam) was selling some of his gear. To our surprise, the list of items for sale included the Yamaha SY85 which he had brought in to the studio and used on the album back in 1994. It was this keyboard which had generated the missing sounds. So now we have access to them again. 

So many notes to choose from...

The list of items for sale also included Martin's Roland A-90 which was his main stage keyboard for many years, and we've taken the opportunity to try that out with a view to buying it. We've not owned an 88-note keyboard before and it is an impressively massive beast which is unlikely to be popular with roadies.

It's been fun firing up these vintage keyboards (especially as many of Widge's live patches are still in evidence) and as long as we can get the midi working on the A-90, I think we'll be buying it.

In sharp focus

Popped into Aubitt studios the other night for a chat with Rob and Mike Holmes, who are finishing off the new The Lens album.

The Lens was the immediate antecedent of IQ (which was formed out of the ashes of The Lens in the early 1980's.) When I heard that Mike was revisiting The Lens I was slightly sceptical; I wasn't sure what the point of it would be.

I was wrong to be unsure. Mike played us three of the tracks from the forthcoming album and they sounded absolutely brilliant. There were shades of Camel, Pink Floyd, Hawkwind (and, of course, IQ) in a setting of  contemporary sounds and with an almost Trance feel at times. It has been beautifully recorded as well.

I'm not sure when The Lens album will be released, but do check it out.