The History of The Land of Yrx

A Highly Personal (and probably inaccurate) History by David Gate

The bulk of this history (up to early 1993) was written for the booklet accompanying 'The Rhetorical Answer'; and has been only slightly revised for this website.

INTRODUCTION AND THE AERIE YEARS

One thing that always sticks in my mind about working with and as The Land of Yrx, and that's sunlight. Most of my memories definitely feature a nice sunny day (even some of the depth of winter ones). Meteorologically speaking this is obviously nonsense, but I am not going to apologise for any appearance by good weather in this booklet, as it will undoubtedly help to leaven the occasionally fraught, sometimes tense, and in one case ultimately tragic nature of the work. But enough of this sentimental garbage; let us start, conventionally, at the very beginning . . .

Which was shortly before Christmas 1979 in the corner of a Shrewsbury record shop, now doing sterling service as a Balti House. I was 16 and stumbling towards my O-levels. Earlier in the year I had been introduced to Robert Andrews, who was a year older than me. Despite having (at the time) wildly differing tastes in music we decided to form some sort of band that would, perhaps, unite my taste in electronics and the European experimentalists with his in progressive rock. Some hope!

However during the following few months we knocked around some increasingly bizarre ideas, and gradually worked towards actually committing something to tape for posterity. At the time we were "rehearsing" in the school music room on Friday afternoons using whatever came to hand - Rob had a bass guitar, I used to borrow a Korg MS20 synth, and we were joined by David Groves, a contemporary of mine who owned and played an acoustic guitar. This unholy trinity made it's first and last recording in Dave Groves' bedroom in April 1980, subsequently he decided that our style perhaps wasn't for him.

During this period Rob (the only one of us with any musical talent or knowledge) had been working on what we had decided was the first part of 'a four part concept piece about the (non-)colour White. I remember little about the other three parts (never properly conceived!) except that part four was to be part one backwards, and that we were going to record the whole thing live before an audience. Then it was going to get us a record deal (preferably with Virgin who actually later rejected us), make us a lot of money, finance the rest of our bizarre musical ideas, etc. (remember when you were 16?). Anyway, I digress. The piece consisted of a systemic pattern of repeating riffs in 3/4, 4/4 and 5/4. That's it.

Later in 1980 our good friend Mark Jenkins having acquired some rudimentary recording gear we recorded it. We also had a jam afterwards which was a hell of a lot more fun; and more valid too. The bitter arguments that followed this put paid to any further work for a considerable period, something that was to be (and still is) an important factor in the Land of Yrx work method. Non-musical activities prevailed for a while.

dave1981.jpg (19921 bytes) Time leaps forward to March 1981. I am now working in the shop where Aerie was formed; Rob is now heading rapidly for his A-levels; Mark Jenkins has through a combination of good luck and financial acumen increased the contents of his home studio to encompass a TEAC 4-track and some decent keyboards and effects. So, we think, the time is ripe to have another go at some world domination. Cunningly we approached the re-recording of our masterwork by laying down a couple of shorter pieces first, including a get down and boogie(ish) number called 666 Ecilop (work it out) which was also part of the main piece, now re-titled simply White.

This time, having re-written most of it, and having better equipment to hand (though still plagued by lack of talent) we did a much better job and felt that we had something that was (almost) worth listening to. On and off during the following six months we knocked ideas around and did a little bit of recording. The end result was that in September 1981 we presented our first release to the nation, on the endearingly (and enduringly) titled Land of Yrx Product label, catalogue number BASL1.

So excited we were at having a tape available, despite the fact that we only made 10 copies, kept one each and gave the other eight to friends that we immediately hit a creative roll and in a series of manic sessions through September and October 1981 including more with Mark at his studio and one in the bedroom of one Richard Andrews (no relation), a schoolfriend of mine who will re-appear later, we had enough material for another tape, so we released "The Further Adventures of Aerie" (misspelled as "Furthur" on the cover as I hadn't concentrated enough during seminal spelling). In fact we went so completely crazy that we spent every spare minute between then and the end of the year recording every stupid half-formed idea that we could come up with, filling three C90 cassettes between September and December. More of the music from this period was released on our third cassette, "Aerie Fairies Nonsense".

After Christmas 1981 had been and gone there was a rapid slow-down in our recording, and most of the January 1982 material is utter drivel. We did play our first (and Aerie's only) gig on January 24th 1982, but it was still at home in the studio to an invited audience. It wasn't very good, but we released most of it on cassette as "In Nomini Patri, et Filli, et Spiritu Sancti ego te Dissolvo" (a title guaranteed to annoy Roman Catholics everywhere). The only other significant pieces from this period were Transmogrification, which we had actually had two previous stabs at before getting this definitive version, In Glorious Panerostereovision, which celebrated (finally) getting a decent mixer, and Anthems To Close The Day By. Naturally, because these were some of the best things we'd ever done, we ignored them when compiling "Not Another Fucking Aerie Tape"; the fifth and final pre-dissolution epistle.
Studio1980.jpg (23991 bytes)Aerie imploded in mid-February 1982, we had a final, drunken session with our mate, bassist Daevid Baird, purely to fill up our last remaining Archive tape; and called it a day after releasing five tapes and recording seven C90s of music (including the gig) in less than two years. Admit it, you're impressed aren't you? Well we sure as hell weren't. In fact we were so dispirited at the time that this could well have been the end of the whole thing, but we decided to hang fire and see what came up; meanwhile amusing ourselves doing a bit of weird electronic experimentalism that wasn't intended for any potential commercial purpose, starting Rob's first solo tape, and compiling what was intended to be the last word from Aerie, the aforementioned "Inertia Remains Dominant", which collected the best unreleased stuff, and a couple of goodies that we wanted people to hear again. And the sun was shining.

THE FIRST YEAR OF THE UNSTOPPABLE YRX MACHINE

Quite by chance an acquaintance of ours from a folk-rock band called Halel mentioned to us that his band had booked the use of the bandstand in our local park for a gig, that it didn't cost anything, and that because it was normally used by brass bands who did two sets there was an evening booking available on the same day. Red rag to a bull for two aspiring musicians who were sick of recording unlistenable self-absorbed crap in bedrooms the chance to play unlistenable self-absorbed crap to an audience was irresistible.

The only problem being that we didn't have a name, didn't really have enough equipment to produce a big enough sound, and had never done anything like this before. Minor problems, really: We simply made up a completely ridiculous name out of our label name (The Land of Yrx Environmental Studies Group Glee Club anybody?), and recruited a couple of friends, John Kertland on bass and Miles Burroughs on percussion, to help out. Then we dived into intensive rehearsal. An hour later, when we'd finished rehearsing, we agreed to meet up in the park half an hour before we were due to play the following Sunday (May 16th 1982).

In the event Miles never showed up, Rob was late, and we were 90% garbage. But it was FUN! So we decided to do it again, and immediately booked another date for a midweek two and a half weeks hence. This time we made a bit more effort, re-working bits of the experiments that we'd taped post-Aerie and trying out some of Rob's new solo tape. Still we enjoyed ourselves so much that we booked another one for August.

LiveAug82.jpg (25997 bytes)In addition we played an indoor gig in a local art gallery, supporting Mark & Chris Jenkins. This time we tried to play it straight by structuring the set, which almost came off. Eight days later we were back in the park, doing a structured but largely lifeless gig, the highlight of which was the glorious Now We're Going (and it precursor Excursion) when everything just fell together for a brief ecstatic moment, before falling apart. So sad. The rest of 1982 produced three more gigs, none particularly special, except that we were slowly improving while still being largely off-the-cuff improvisators, who had no intention of studio recording.


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REFINEMENT OF THE ART OF BLIND OPTIMISM

In January 1983 we received our first ever piece of national press coverage (a review of "Inertia Remains Dominant"). While this was very nice it wasn't as helpful as it might have been, since of course we had changed our name in the intervening period, and still had no intention of releasing product. However the timing of the review was to have some far-reaching consequences for us, as next to it on the magazine page was a review of a band who sounded vaguely similar to us in style, and who also had a daft name. I made a mental note to try and get a contact address from the magazine for them; when a mysterious parcel arrived from Petersfield, Hampshire from that very band who'd had the same thought as me, but had chased up my extremely uncommon surname in the Shrewsbury phone book. This is where the Land of Yrx met their spiritual counterparts from Hampshire: Uncle Ian and the Tooth Decay (later they did the same as us and truncated their name to the far more sensible Uncle Ian).

A meeting was arranged on neutral ground (London) between Rob and I and Mark Francombe of Uncle Ian, and a great time was had by all, starting with our attempts to recognise each other from poorly reproduced magazine pictures. The upshot of this momentous event was a provisional agreement that Mark, and his bandmate Nick Elborough, would journey up to Shrewsbury to guest at our first birthday gig in May, and that later in the year we would travel to Petersfield to play with them.

LiveMay83.jpg (26297 bytes)In the event they chose to play as guests in our set rather than do their own set in Shrewsbury; thus inadvertently finding their way onto the first Land of Yrx release, "Oh Look! There's A Red Door", which was recorded at that gig.


The Petersfield gig produced the most seriously anarchic performance yet from the Land of Yrx; blasted out of our skulls from a seven hour journey to Hampshire in a Morris Minor with a top speed of 40mph the day before, no sleep, an ill advised trip to London, and too many recreational substances and alcohol. We ripped through some extremely horrible music (including a cover of Faust's "It's A Bit of A Pain" - which it was), which strangely the audience seemed to like, though someone thought we were miming to a tape because (as always) we were recording the gig. Why the hell anyone would want to mime a racket like that I don't know.

road1983.jpg (14255 bytes)To cap it all we were forced to return to Shrewsbury that same night, arriving back at 7.30am.

LiveAug83.jpg (23301 bytes)In August we played another ill advised gig in the Quarry Park; the end result was a 45 minute lead up to about 10 minutes of worthwhile music. During the gig Rob walked offstage for the first time ever, our temporary extra bassist/guitarist Dave Morreale also walked off, and saxophonist Andy Pinches never even played. Rob and Dave returned for the end, but it was clear that a massive rethink was necessary. Blind optimism wasn't working any more.

THE YRX MACHINE GETS INTO GEAR

At this point Richard Andrews re-appears like the good fairy to save our collective bacon. In the intervening period he has been getting seriously into electronics and has amassed some Korg and Casio gear. He asks to borrow my MS50; someone suggests us all getting together for a bit of a bash, it is the 8th of September 1983 and things are looking up. In one incredible session we recorded around 50 minutes of music, about half of which was (to our minds, and bearing in mind what had gone before,) amazing. Highlights included Passing Etruria, Which Tower, Grimus and Petersfield Bedroom.

We then decided that what we really needed was a permanent third member to fill out the sound (we were still recording entirely live at this point). Up stepped Daevid Baird, who had helped preside over the dissolving of Aerie a couple of years previously. With his bass and keyboards we started to work on a potential live set, while releasing our first studio tape, ". . . And Damn The Consequences", mainly consisting of the Richard Andrews material, and a killer version of Composition recorded with Uncle Ian. Daevid dropped out, and Rob and I developed our most commercial set yet from bits of the Richard Andrews session and odd ideas; and dragged Uncle Ian up to Shrewsbury on December 10th 1983 to play a concept gig, "Vital Cinema", for music and film.

liveDec83.jpg (27885 bytes)It was ambitious, it almost worked, but it was bloody cold and nobody beyond our co-opted crew came. Balls. The sun is definitely in at this point. However we rounded off the year in fine style by recording our most seriously avant-garde piece to date, the 38 minute tape-delay opus Merman Ikon Bee, just before the end of the year. Sun peeping through clouds, good weather on the way.


Studio1983.jpg (24647 bytes)Bits and pieces of recording during the February to April 1984 period found us working on borrowed Portastudios and producing work we could live with, some of which was developed from the Vital Cinema concept and which gradually became our third release, "Cerebration". This is represented by Das Bergrabnis (original title C'est La Vie, which shows what a fatalistic cast of mind we were in at the start of the sessions), The Ritual Watussi (parts one & two)) (from Vital Cinema) and Destroying The Beauty Of Fragile Objects (a dub excursion. This mature work was actually well received and garnered complimentary reviews!!! Had we arrived? Doubt it!. Anyway, May was rapidly heading our way, and being sentimental souls we simply had to play a second birthday party in the good old Quarry Park.

liveMay84.jpg (25468 bytes)For this we fielded a five piece line-up, consisting of me, Rob, Steve Collins on guitar, Ray Gordon on flute and our old mate Mark Jenkins on keys. Great gig. John Kertland's band Creatures of Habit opened, Uncle Ian played next, then us, the sun was shining, loads of people there, plenty of wine and stuff; you could hear us seven miles away. Not surprisingly we've never played there since. After this minor triumph we added Andy Pinches on saxophone, lost Ray and jammed on the themes from the gig, producing Annus Mirabilis 1984 (the gig version being AM 1983). This was originally around 17 minutes long, with some pretty boring bits, however a quick wielding of the scalpel and it became the 10 minute piece you can hear on our fourth release, "Nadir & Eventual Decay".
LiveAug84.jpg (23349 bytes)Then we played our best ever gig at the Bear Steps Art Gallery, once again with Uncle Ian. Rob Steve & I also recorded Beschneidener Erich for the second Land of Yrx Products Compilation and Bridges At Either Side for "Nadir".

LiveNov84.jpg (22134 bytes)1984 was rounded off by a trip to Portsmouth in November for the final outing of this line-up, the four of us being joined by Mike Beck on guitar for some serious six stringed mayhem, finishing with Rob attempting to destroy his malfunctioning distortion box, and a certain amount of bad feeling between all of us, leading to the inevitable breakup just as we were getting somewhere. Ho hum.

ANNUS NOT-EXACTLY-MIRABILIS 1985

The year 1985 was a slow starter. Steve & Andy had departed for pastures new after Portsmouth, we were prevented from staging our third Birthday Party gig in the Quarry Park due to reactions from vested interests in the town following the previous one and we simply felt that we'd run out of ideas and things to do.

Video1984.jpg (25136 bytes)Our solution was to immerse ourselves in other projects; including marketing our first videotape, "Annus Mirabilis 1983", which had been shot at the second Birthday Party in 1984 and subsequently edited and messed around with by Nick Elborough & Mark Francombe in their "Urban Picnic Video" guise. This may not have been the best quality video on the market, but it was cheap, and we did sell a few.

It was during this inactive summer that a performance artist friend of ours, Dave Morreale, who had gigged with us the previous year, introduced us to a young friend of his that he'd met while busking. This was actually to be the most significant event of the year as it introduced Martyn Smith into the ranks of the Land of Yrx, just as we were offered our biggest gig to date, the 1985 UK Electronica festival. Martyn, being young and naive at the time, jumped at the chance to prop up our aged and jaded carcasses in front of an audience in sunny Sheffield; and the usual Land of Yrx brand of intensive rehearsal (as described in Chapter 2) was undertaken.

Video1985.jpg (30765 bytes)The gig was an interesting mixture of agony, ecstasy and sheer bloody-mindedness. The agony was provided by lack of sleep (we sat up all night cutting up tape covers for our stall) and a long journey, the ecstasy by playing a reasonably decent gig despite that playing (amongst others) Martyn's solo guitar piece Lotic Utterings and the electronics/guitar meltdown of 60 Impossible Things Before Breakfast and getting praise from our peer group, and the sheer-bloodymindedness by proving that even the most reasonable of people can snap after all of the above, provided by myself and Martyn having a furious row with the organisers who had asked us to pay to get into the evening gig. The journey back was a nightmare; due to advanced fatigue I was hallucinating; and as I was the only driver in our party it became a bit fraught. Still, we survived, as always.

A very mixed reaction followed this performance. Two press reviews, one mildly praiseful, the other unequivocally damning, a request for permission to release the gig on cassette (this became "Termination Point" our first outside release) and some interesting contacts. Of course we broke up immediately. Rob and I came back together in December to start recording his fifth solo tape, some of which was to be recorded on Mark Jenkins' 8-track set-up in London; which was a terrific way to round off a pretty bad year. In the end the sessions spilled over into 1986; as we went back to remix Joyeux! for the forthcoming AMP Records compilation; for which we also recorded Leopold Bloom (For It Is He). As Mark had now gone 16-track we also started recording the abortive first Land of Yrx LP, of which only one track, Danse A L'Ecole Des Bigots Technicales (dedicated to the staff of Music Technology magazine), was ever recorded; and even then we didn't finish it, only did a rough mix and promptly lost the master tapes. It appeared that the Land of Yrx had come to a. And it was raining.

THE LAND OF YRX 2-3 YEAR LAYOFF METHOD EXPLAINED

Time staggers forward to the Summer of 1988. We are now older if not wiser. None of us have really worked together or even spoken for long periods since April 1986. However, much to our surprise, the AMP Records compilation finally appears after a 2 year wait; and we are shocked out of our complacency by a request to play the 1988 UK Electronica, at St. Johns Church, Smith Square, Westminster, where all the Radio 3 concerts come from. Of course we can't resist it and start writing a new set. This time we are playing with a London based guitarist, Steve Palmer, who was also on the compilation.

LiveAug88.jpg (24955 bytes)He is playing on our stuff and we are playing his piece, "New Voyager". As soon as we meet up for a first rehearsal we have problems; the person who was going to play lead guitar (in a very guitar heavy lineup) can't make it. Re-enter Martyn Smith; who had returned quietly from Cambridge University after an accident. He stepped in at short notice; and we got down to business. And, furthermore, none of your typical half-an-hour and off rehearsals that the reader has come to expect from us, oh no! four solid days of sodding rehearsals. Ugh. Anyway it certainly put a smile on our faces on the way to London, and I've got photos to prove it.

road1988.jpg (19221 bytes)For some reason we seemed to lose a lot of our good humour on the day. I put this down to pressure, alcohol, too many hyper-critical neurotics both in and around the band and simple petrification as we assessed the quality of the other acts. We still feel that we played extremely badly for most of the set, even after the horrible practise marathon we were under-rehearsed, sloppy unco-ordinated and (in one case) out of tune. So what's new?. However we surprised ourselves at the end of the set by turning in an incredible version of Heldon's "Stand-by", and getting a big round of applause. This was more like it, the big-time at last!. Nice sunny day, too. Of course, we tried to do it again, sans Steve, in Shrewsbury, and despite premiering our one new piece, Subterfuge, which Martyn and I had hastily come up with a couple of days before we failed miserably and broke up. This time it looked permanent, as Rob stated that under no circumstances would he ever work with the Land of Yrx again. Ever.

THERE'S LIFE IN THE OLD THING YET

Nothing is ever that simple, naturally. When I got back in touch with Martyn after a year or so and found that he was keen to do something again the last thing we intended to do was revive the Land of Yrx, after all that was the past, wasn't it, and we were looking to the future. I honestly can't remember which of us suggested it, but before we knew where we were we were in London recording the new Land of Yrx release, "A Place Under The Sun", in an intensive four day, 12 hour-a-day session. The track A Place Under The Sun was developed from the 1988 UKE set, the rest was new material.

studio1990.jpg (23520 bytes)At the end of the sessions I conveniently caught food poisoning from a badly microwaved spring roll, turning the return journey into an echo of the return from Sheffield in 1985. The tape was very well received, but although we had planned to follow it up fairly quickly outside non-musical pressures forced a wait.

I started work on the projected follow-up in the spring of 1992. This was to be a three-way collaboration between myself, Martyn and Andy Pinches, last seen playing sax in 1984 but now well established in his own right as a star of the ambient scene; and highly regarded. Work progressed slowly by fits and starts, through occasional meetings of the protagonists, despite the three of us never getting together at the same time; we knew where we were going.

Martyn Smith committed suicide in February 1993.
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(written by David Gate in May 1993 - revised February 1999)

AND THEN . . . ?

Ironically enough it was Rob who brought me the above unwelcome news. We had been in occasional touch to discuss an idea that he had had for a retrospective compilation of our work. Eventually while we were arguing over track listings and cover designs for what became 'The Rhetorical Answer' he asked to hear what I'd been working on for the next album.

band1993.jpg (23573 bytes)After hearing it he made a couple of helpful suggestions about improvements and offered to play on it. This was probably the best thing that could have happened as he brought two incredible musicians, Rees Wesson and Dan Cassidy, with him who made a significant contribution to the album. Andy's part was even more bizarre, as he decided to do a piece of his own in his studio with his vocal collaborator Jackie Robinson that was inspired by one of my pieces (and became its second part). To this day I have never met Jackie Robinson!. 

Apart from Andy's contribution which was heavily layered, as is his style, we returned to the old Land of Yrx working method of having a brief run through then recording live to DAT, with the intention of only stopping if someone made a really horrible error.  As it was we only had to do one of the tracks - Crash (which only has Rob & I on it anyway) - twice.  That's what you get for employing the best, even if we couldn't afford to pay them!

At the same time as doing these sessions we also started working on what was to be a decisive turning point in Rob's solo career, the album 'on Stage', which was intended to herald his putting old material behind him and moving on to new stuff.  Although the album worked out well some of this material was later to come back and haunt us in a most surprising way.


LiveSept93.jpg (18578 bytes)Both the album and the compilation were complied/recorded in June and July 1993, but we held the releases until September to coincided with our third UK Electronica performance. This continued the tradition of Land of Yrx live sets - Rob and I rehearsed together several times; Andy and I rehearsed together once, Rees couldn't make it in the end. I travelled down with all the gear and merchandise in a friend's car, leaving early in the morning - Rob and Andy followed on later in the day; but their car broke down leaving them stranded on the motorway. We were the opening act and I was very nervous about the fact the two thirds of the band hadn't arrived half-an-hour before stage time. I had, in fact, pulled together a scratch band of myself, Steve Palmer (who's new band Mooch were following us) and Alquimia (a Mexican improvising vocalist/keyboard player) to attempt to play a truncated set, when Rob and Andy arrived, breathless, having run from Euston Station with their guitars/saxes under their arms. In the end Alquimia played too and we did one of our better gigs; including our reaction to artistes who mime (smashing up an electric piano to a sequencer based piece).

It is quite possible that The Land of Yrx would have continued to work happily after this, except for one small detail. Both Rob and I left for (separate) Universities the day after the gig.

Out & Down In Preston and Vianne

For the remainder of 1993 I had no access to any of my equipment, as it was in storage in Shrewsbury.  Rob, who I was finally on terms with again was stuck in Sheffield with just an acoustic guitar for company; and, what was worse, I couldn't find anyone in Preston who had any interest in experimental or different music at all.

feel1994.jpg (16317 bytes)Instead I started to get involved with the dance scene, as a lighting technician, and to do sound for a local band who needed a helping hand.  And, although I retrieved my gear after Christmas I found that I wasn't able to do anything worthwhile with it at all, even when I changed my ageing Commodore 64 computer, which had recorded 'A Place Under The Sun', 'Walking Into The Sky' and 'On Stage', for a nice new Atari ST.  I messed around for the early part of 1994, but was not incredibly sorry to put everything back into storage while I went to France for four months as soundman/driver/manager etc. for the band Cruising Julie.

I came back from France in September 1994, and was not accepted back into University as I had missed my resits.  Although I managed to worm my way onto another course I found that I had just taken on too many things at once, I couldn't find the time to do music, even if I had had the urge, which I didn't.  So the gear stayed in it's boxes until 1995 when I tried to do some stuff with Cruising Julie's guitarist and singer, but it didn't work as we were all coming from different directions musically.

When I moved into a new flat at the end of 1995 I felt so sure that I wasn't going to be doing any music that I lent my rack of synths and effects to a mate and just said he could keep them for as long as he wanted.  And, as if I needed this mood underlining, my flat was burgled in May 1996 and, as well as most of my CDs my only working keyboard was stolen.

With typical Land of Yrx irony it was another theft that provided the catalyst that got me working again.  Adrian, the friend who was using my rack, had left it in the studio overnight, and when he returned it was gone.   Although he managed to get it back (and I never did find out who'd had it) one of my synths, one of my two Simmons programmable mixers and my rack mounting distortion box were gone.  My reaction was to go out, buy a new synth, replace my ST (which had conveniently died) and start working on some new music.

Of course as soon as I'd got everything set up and I'd started working on the piece that was to become Endgame on 'Long Night Falling' my landlord sold my flat out from under me and I ended up homeless, broke (although working), sleeping on a mate's settee and with all my belongings in boxes in a garage.

studio1998.jpg (20518 bytes)  Luckily at the end of the summer I was able to find a new home, and set up my studio in a tiny, and to my mind otherwise useless, area behind my bedroom.  This was so cramped that I immediately christened it 'Spacious Sound'.  It was in this little and unheated space that I continued working on demos for 'Long Night Falling' and programming for Rob's next project.

Rob (the lucky sod) had been offered the chance to make a CD for the Cyclops label.  And, funnily enough, much of the material for it was a re-run of tracks we thought we'd put to bed with 'On Stage'.  As constant meetings were a problem - Rob was back in Shrewsbury by this time and I was working odd hours, we started the album with him sending me pages of manuscript and me very slowly transcribing them onto the ST and picking suitable sounds.  This is how I spent Christmas and New Year 1998!

Could It All Go Wrong Again?

Yes.  But not immediately.  Rob paid his first visit to Preston late in 1998 with a borrowed minidisk portastudio in tow to start laying down the tracks for the project that was to become the 'An Amnesty For Bonny Things On Sunny Days' CD.  And we ran into problems straight away.  My 'trusty' Atari ST (the third I'd owned) refused to stay in synch with the minidisk, kept dropping notes, hanging etc.  So, although we corrected some errors in programming and laid down some guitars we did not get very far.  Also it became very apparent that the room was simply too small to work in.

Studio1999.jpg (26325 bytes)The solutions were:  move the studio into the spare bedroom (now that my lodger had conveniently vacated it), change from ST to PC, and stop worrying.  Thankfully all of these did the trick, and throughout the spring and summer of 1999 we worked on both 'Amnesty' and 'Long Night Falling', eventually finishing both to our satisfaction at the end of August.

RobAndrews.jpg (31985 bytes)We even went into a 'commercial' studio to master 'Amnesty', although we ended up with so many problems with this version that Cyclops, Rob's label, ended up remastering the whole thing.

Almost as soon as these projects were finished I had to face up to financial reality:   I couldn't afford to live in a two bedroom house by myself, so the studio gear decamped to the new studio that was being set up by some friends of mine, and my lodger moved back in.  Unfortunately the downside to having the studio away from the house as that I never got to use it, as right from the start Pacifica Studios was a busy and commercial proposition.  I did, however remix two of the 'Long Night Falling' pieces there in March 2000.

When my lodger moved out again in April 2000 I decided that I needed to live more cheaply, thus putting in train a year of peripateticness as I move house no fewer than three times before settling at my current address in February 2001.

Studio2001.jpg (24987 bytes) The first thing I did was retrieve my studio gear, and add some more as I'd since started working on a degree in New Music & Media.   Throughout 2001 I spent with wild abandon (see studio history for more details) but did not work on any music for release.  'Amnesty' was released by Cyclops in January 2001, but I kept making excuses for holding back on 'Long Night Falling.  Rob had, meanwhile, started working on his second Cyclops release 'The Host' with Dave Groves at his home studio in Basingstoke.  Eventually he brought the finished pieces to Preston for mixing, and the album was released in February 2002.

Right Now!  This Minute!

The story comes to a (temporary) conclusion in July 2002.  The 'Long Night Falling' album, now remastered, is off being duplicated and will be released finally at the end of the month.  I passed my degree, and am about to embark on an MA.  The studio has relocated to an upstairs room in my house, and I am about 2/3 of the way through recording a new Land of Yrx album, provisionally entitled 'Waiting For Dawn', which will also be released as a DVD as most of the music has been made simultaneously with video.

No doubt it will all go horribly wrong . . .

David Gate - July 2002

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