Blake

I knew Karmatruffle were on a hiding to nothing in the end because we lived so far from each other - I had to drive from Melksham to Reading just to rehearse, it was ridiculous! I started the band with Magda in Cheltenham just as a laugh to play Bevis Frond covers, but things got out of hand and before we knew it w'ed been signed! We recorded the album over three weekends in the autumn of 2005 at studio in a beuatiful little village in the Cotswolds. We put our ten best live tracks on it (not including the three that we'd recorded for the 'She's Not All That' single). All on analogue. It worked!

I realised soon after releasing 'Final Whistle' that I wasn't quite done. I badly wanted to re-record 'She's Not All That' and 'A Better Way' - two of the tracks I originally recorded with Karmatruffle for our single on the Ectomusic label - as the record company owned the copyright (unlike on the album, which was released on my own Rockhopper Records). And the songs were still coming out. I felt I handled the production better on this one. Many of the tracks were actually built up from four track demos I'd made on cassettes over the previous three or four years. There's more of a theological bent, too, although the familiar theme of unrequited love does rear its mournful head at one point!

This is Magda's favourite so it must be alright. I honestly thought the cupboard was bare after Carruthers, but I still hadn't managed to find a place on an album for 'Falling' which, apart from the first four bars to the track which eventually became 'Final Whistle', and was actually a mistake, was the first thing I recorded in my new studio with the DP01. Also, I was listening to Mark Lamarr's alternative sixties show in the car one evening and I heard a track (I forget what it was now) which was so simple in its instrumentation, but so powerful in attack, that it inspired another burst of songwriting. My wife, however, has still not forgiven me for making her pose for the cover shot.

This album is a collection of unreleased material from 2002-2008. The earliest tracks were recorded with the embryonic Karmatruffle (then known as The Dandelions) while our drummer Jamie was still at school! (I, unfortunately, cannot claim to be anywhere near as young). One third of the tracks are instrumentals (I'm a sucker for them) and it includes my favourite recording, 'Hungarian Love Song'.