We are very happy to announce details of our brand new 4 track EP on the French label Monopsone. Our EP is the third in the series, entitled Fragments, and will be officially released in June on 10″ heavyweight vinyl and come complete with a digital download code. You can pre-order the release here and get all 3 releases in this set delivered in March/April. To order it individually, you will have to wait until June, when the label will start taking orders.
Tracklisting :
A1. Defeat
A2. Monument
B1. Skeletons
B2. Ideas As Opiates
This EP was recorded at home over a few weekends during January 2012. The B-side features a cover of the Tears For Fears song, Ideas As Opiates, whose piano was recorded one afternoon at a church in the village of Brewood, Staffordshire. We will post some sound clips very soon. More release news coming up…
ANA (W&W010), the new release from epic45 collaborator P.Manasseh, is now available to buy from Norman Records, in an edition of 200 CDs packaged in custom, handmade card sleeves. ANA sees the multi-instrumentalist working very much in isolation, crafting minimalist compositions that are an exploration of the way we see and interpret the world, an attempt to create sonic systems based on visual patterns and structures.
Click here to listen to snippets and to purchase from Norman Records for £7.99.
We are kicking off the new year with some very exciting developments that we hope will be our main focus throughout 2012. Today sees the launch of the brand new website for Wayside and Woodland Recordings, which is run by Rob and Ben from epic45. Here you will find information on all the artists involved on the label, which is currently home to many epic45 related projects. In conjunction with this, we also launch our W&W bandcamp page which will be added to with new releases and rarities over the coming months. Here also you will also find a free 8 track download sampler entitled An Introduction To Wayside and Woodland which features unreleased and exclusive recordings from epic45, The Toy Library and E.L Heath as well as a taster from the forthcoming My Autumn Empire album, which will be released this spring. Click the cover below to have a listen….
In other news, epic45 will be taking a bit of a break in 2012 while we focus more on the label and other projects. We have some exciting releases in the pipeline for the first half of the year (more on those soon) but other than that 2012 will be somewhat of a hiatus for epic45. No live shows are planned. Thanks to everyone who supported us in 2011 and for all the positive press and comments that the album ‘Weathering’ managed to garner. epic45 isnt over, just time for a change.
Have a great year….
x
Ps. Big thanks to Matt Andrews from Those Mountains for all his hardwork in putting the W&W website together.
After ten years of releasing music, Make Mine Music will close its doors for the final time at the end of 2011. We are very proud of what we’ve achieved, running the label ourselves and releasing nearly 70 albums and EPs. However, busy personal lives, rising costs, diminishing sales and the increasing number of “illegal” downloads have forced us to think long and hard about our future. In short, we decided that it was better to quit now rather than compromise or go on half-heartedly.
A few of the artists whose music was released on the label now consider themselves to be retired, whilst others will continue to release their music elsewhere. All of the releases on the label have now been deleted, so if you are missing anything from your collection, now would be a good time to buy those CDs or records. Our friends at Norman Records in Leeds will continue to provide our mail order service until we run out of stock. We have also lowered the prices of many of the releases, should you need an extra incentive.
We would like to say a warm and heartfelt thank you to everyone who has supported us over the years by buying our releases or otherwise extending a hand of friendship. We couldn’t have done it without you.
Scott Sinfield, November 2011
The final release on MMM is the compilation, Vox Pop, which is available via Bandcamp and will also be sold as an ultra limited CDr release via Norman Records this month. To listen in advance, click here. The compilation features unreleased tracks from across the MMM stable as well as an exclusive epic45 track called ‘Field and Stream’ as well as a collaboration between epic45 and July Skies entitled ‘Requiem For A Village’. We hope you enjoy. Happy new year and have a great 2012 everyone.
Exclusive My Autumn Empire (Ben) and The Toy Library (Rob) tracks appear on the new 4 cd compilation set recently released on Oxide Tones. All profits from this release will be going to the Red Cross towards Japan earthquake/tsunami relief work.
Finally, the debut from Charles Vaughan is with us. Ever since the mysterious arrival of the ‘April15th’ EP back in 2007, this album has been rumoured, along with a host of other slowly gestating projects which will all, hopefully, see the light of day on Wayside & Woodland Records, sometime in the future.
So, who is Charles Vaughan? Some may know him as the figure from the popular 70s science fiction show ‘Survivors’, a character who dedicates himself to documenting , cataloguing and indexing what’s left of civilisation after a plague has wiped out 99% of the population. This was surely the inspiration on the musician behind the crumbling, mildewed sound-scapes to be found on ‘Documenting The Decay’.
Some may also recognise his name from recent releases by the band epic45, his presence and involvement growing from a thank you in the sleeve notes, to ‘production assistance’ to full blown musical contributions on the band’s latest album ‘Weathering’. There are even whispers on the wind that he may even be a member of the band, an alter ego, but those claims cannot be confirmed…
The music here, as mentioned above, is a collection of tape distressed instrumentals, mainly played on ancient synths, piano, old broken vinyl and the odd detuned zither. A copy recently found it’s way to the influential writer Simon Reynolds who wrote about it in a article on how ‘Hauntology’ (a term he himself coined) is far from dead, indeed, it is very much still ‘undead’. It’s safe to say that the music contained on the album could fit into that category, with it’s evocations of a future that never was, redundant technology left to rot and fading memories of post-war optimism.
Musical reference points could include the work of William Basinski, Aphex Twin’s ambience, Eno and The Caretaker. But Charles Vaughan has very much carved out a peculiarly isolated area of his own, a strange, mouldy, spore marked environment in which he continues to produce these documents….
Click here to order for Norman Records. We hope you enjoy this, which will be the first in a new run of new W&W releases over the coming months.
The fine folks over at Norman Records are now taking pre-orders for the epic45 reissues that we mention in the previous update. The was a slight pressing error with the disc of ‘Against The Pull of Autumn’, but that is being corrected and will hopefully be on sale in around 3 weeks time. The ‘Secret, Signs and Threats // Collected Recordings’ set will be available sooner, hopefully in around 2 weeks time. Both 2 disc sets are retailing for £15.99 each. We are really pleased with how they look, and there are plenty of images and words to pore over too, whilst listening to these remastered versions. Its been a fascinating experience going back over these early recordings and writing about our formative years. We hope you enjoy them. Thanks again to everyone involved in making these reissues happen. x
After alot of hard work compiling these over the last few months, we can now announce the release of 2 x double CD sets of early, out-of-print epic45 singles and albums- on the brilliant Japanese label, Preco Records. The first pack collects together the unofficial debut album ‘Secrets, Signs and Threats’ (released via our website as a free download in 2000) along with our early singles and vinyl releases. The second set contains the out-of-print ‘Reckless Engineers’ and ‘Against The Pull Of Autumn’ albums, both initially released on the Canadian label, Where Are My Records. These sets are completely remastered and come housed in a 6 panel digipak, with bonus tracks and a 12 page booklet containing extensive notes and writings from people who have been closely associated with epic45 over the years.
Details of tracklistings are below.
epic45 – Secrets, Signs And Threats / Collected Recordings
PRECO 012 [2xCD]
Release: October 5, 2011
Disc-1: Secrets, Signs and Threats
Don’t Just Go, Invade!
Panama
Late Summer
…And On That Night She Left Me
August Passed Away Unnoticed
Early Autumn
Why Didn’t She Send A Postcard
Monk’s Walk
The Motorway Journey Of Hope
Coastal (Bonus Track)
At Sea (Bonus Track)
Disc-2: Collected Recordings (1998-2004)
The Overwhelming Feeling
Shorebound
Sunset Over Sea
We Finished Our Drinks And Left
Stuart Banks
Para Pintores De Escenario
An Abandoned Airfield
When The Cold Weather Comes
At Least One Of These Stars Is Venus
And They Still Stand, The Churches Of England
The Sky Was As Clear As A Map
A Year Without A Summer
epic45 – Reckless Engineers / Against The Pull Of Autumn
PRECO 013 [2xCD]
Release: October 5, 2011
Disc-1: Reckless Engineers
Do Nothing Until You Hear From Me
A Song For Seasons
August Passes Away Unnoticed
Low Tide
Remote Canals
Like A Crowbar, Humour Seperated Us
For Painters Of Scenery
A Forlorn Reminder Of Better Days
Estuary
Shorebound
An Inbetween Light (Bonus Track)
Dudley Sutton (Bonus Track)
Disc-2: Against The Pull Of Autumn
I’m Getting Too Young For This
Programmes For Schools
You Said Nothing
Barn Diversions
Where The Holidays Went
Sculpted By Winter
The Water Tower
These Dead Years
Against The Pull Of Autumn
Where To Now, Captain?
Secret Maps Of England
River Traffic
On Second Thoughts (Bonus Track)
IDST (Bonus Track)
These will be available at the start of October directly from Preco and via Norman Records. More details soon.
Special thanks to the following people for making this release happen : Osamu @ Preco, Mike Rowley, Dom James, Andy Robbins, Antony Harding, Tom Williams, Stu Banks and Matt Andrews.
