Bill Fay - Countless Branches - VINYL LP

Deluxe double vinyl LP pressing including bonus tracks. 2019 . The great Bill Fay returns with the third album in the celebrated second phase of his recording career. Inch21 years ago, Colin Miles of See For Miles records dropped a pebble in a pond.Inch says Fay. It was Miles who, on a gut instinct, reissued Bill Fay's albums for Deram - records made in 1970 and 1971 and deleted shortly afterwards - which Miles had always admired. Rave reviews and endorsements from the likes of Jim O'Rourke (Tortoise) and Jeff Tweedy (Wilco) led to a huge revival of interest in this vanished artist. Fay, now 76, was not actually a hermit but a quiet, private person who had withdrawn from a music world changed to the point where he felt no longer involved. But he had continued to make music almost every day in the intervening decades. InchColin said to me, 'You wanna get out there, Bill',Inch Fay says, chuckling at the memory. InchI replied, 'I'm a corner-of-the-room person, Colin'.Inch

Originally issued on Decca's Deram imprint in 1970, Bill Fay's debut album is a soulful and introspective folk-rock masterpiece - With it's warm, rich arrangements and heartfelt lyrics, it showcases Fay's poetic storytelling and enduring from-the-heart emotion. This 180gm vinyl re-issue replicates the original UK stereo pressing. Produced by Peter Eden and orchestrated by Michael Gibbs, Bill Fay's debut album is often stately, frequently poignant, and unfalteringly catchy. Fay's voice, a tentative mix of purity and knowhow is framed by high-period Decca arrangements, full of celestial strings and flourishing horns. The dressing does not take away from the immediacy of the material; a wistful eye cast across post-war Britain, removed from the cliches of the swinging sixties. Here as a hymnal full of kinship, family, encouragement and strangeness. For example, The Sun Is Bored the sun is bored, and the moon wants to get away to another place. Sing Us One Of Your Songs May while inventing The Streets 30 years before Mike Skinner appeared is a sweetly powerful rumination on grief. Methane River conflates pollution of water with a closed mind. Gentle Willie explores the complexities of pacifism; Be Not So Fearful championed by Jeff Tweedy is an aural equivalent of an arm around the shoulder. These are NOT moon-June-love ditties. Comparisons have been made to Nick Drake, but there is also Peter Sarstedt, Gilbert O'Sullivan and Brian Protheroe at play here. Original copies of Bill Fay change hands for three figure sums. For once, you can understand the price tag this a remarkably accomplished debut.

The music of the Slovenian-born composer Vito Žuraj features multilayered stereophonic sound concepts. He often draws inspiration for his pieces from his passion for tennis, recreating the game's tension with sound. The Hawk-Eye concerto was developed with featured horn soloist Saar Berger. Changeover for instrumental groups and orchestra, is interpreted here by Žuraj's frequent collaborator Ensemble Modern along with two ensemble works, Restrung and Runaround. A bonus DVD also contains Žuraj's percussion trio Top Spin.