Clay Pipe is pleased to welcome back the Tinderstick’s keyboard player David Boulter to the label.

Since his Yarmouth LP in 2020, and the spoken word-based Lovers Walk the following year, Boulter has concentrated on his soundtrack work. He has produced scores for documentary maker Volkan Üce’s Displaced – and Tinnitus, a visually striking film by Brazilian director Gregorio Graziosi. He has also released a series of lathe-cuts featuring his soundtrack work, and the Factory Mini CD and Twelve Bells for Libuše flexi-disc single on Clay Pipe.

St Ann’s, is a tribute to the council estate, on the edge of Nottingham city centre that defined Boulter’s formative years:

“I was born in the old St Ann’s. Famously documented in the late 60s as some of the poorest social housing in England. Crumbling, cramped, and full of damp. We had a shared toilet in the backyard and no bathroom, some of the houses were without hot water, it was freezing cold in winter. Everything seemed black and white.”

By the late 1960s, St. Ann's, like many other city centre areas, had become run down and was earmarked by the council for slum clearance. 340 acres were bulldozed and 30,000 people including David's family were compulsorily uprooted. In 1970 the Victorian streets were replaced with a Radburn-style estate.

“We moved to the new St Ann’s when I was six. There were two indoor toilets! A bathroom with a shiny white ceramic bath that you could fill whenever you wanted. Central heating, and a small garden at the front and back of the house. We had our own shed, and a cherry blossom tree just over the fence. Everything came into colour.”

Subtle use of guitar, double bass, vibraphone, tenor recorder and field recordings conjure up the old streets of cobble and slate, damp brickwork and grey skies, juxtaposing the newer post-1960s world of pebble dash and green grass, fresh air and a brighter future.

“After we moved to the new house, I still went to the old Victorian school, until it was demolished about a year later. It was very strange to walk to school through all the old houses and streets while they were being torn apart.”

This is a record full of personal memories, but it also tells the tale of Britain’s inner cities and their renewal in the 60s and 70s.

“At the end of 2022, my Mum could no longer live alone in our house. I spent Christmas packing belongings and emptying it, what to keep, what not to keep? The emotions and memories were intense. There was still the same carpet on the stairs that my Dad had put down when we’d moved in.
I’d already started to make some music that I knew had something to do with Nottingham, and the streets I’d spent my childhood wandering. When I arrived back home in Prague, the feelings poured into the music.

I grew up in St Ann’s and lived around the area until I left for London when I was 25. This LP is a celebration of a community, streets that still hold a special place in my heart. I will always be from St Ann’s and St Ann’s will always be a part of me.“

TRACK LISTING

01 Plantagenet Street In The Morning
02 Cobbles And Slate
03 Blue Bell Hill
04 Donkey Hill
05 Grafton Terrace
06 Plantagenet Street In The Afternoon
07 Corporation Oaks
08 The Arboretum
09 Ford Street St Mary's
10 A New St Ann's
11 Along The St Ann's Well Road
12 Abbotsford And Hunger Hill
13 Pebble Dash And Green Grass

Clay Pipe welcomes Cate Brooks back to the label this time under her Café Kaput’ moniker. This is an album about language. Sailing as an activity has a language of its’ own. A dialect, a feeling. There is the language of nomenclature; the technical and descriptive terms used on board, along with the visual signs and codes of the discipline.

Exploring somewhat deeper, there is also the undeniable mystique that has surrounded the language of the shipping forecast since it captured the imagination of the public upon its’ inception. Amongst the deepest leagues, there is a third language; something very ephemeral and non- verbal. The way the concept of sailing makes us feel; what it means to us personally. Looking out to the middle distance, watching a lone boat on a calm sea- what goes through your mind? This album explores those emotions and offers a few possible answers. Cate Brooks, 2022. 01. Waves & Knots 02.Sea Kites 03. Easterly Four or Five 04. Tug Boat 05. Light Vessel Automatic 06.Inshore Waters 07. Mid December 08. A Surface Like Glass 09. Maritime

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A beautiful, slow-motion distillation of ambient textures and hazy melodic synth lines, recalling Cate's work as The Advisory Circle but with a renewed focus on instrumental interplay and evocative aquatic phrases. Another absolutely killer outing for Clay Pipe too, a perfect fit.

Memories of Earth is D Rothon’s second LP for Clay Pipe Music. In the years since 2018’s critically acclaimed Nightscapes, aside from working on this follow-up, he has played pedal steel on albums by Lost Horizons (on the John Grant-fronted track Cordelia), Liela Moss and Johanna Warren. He has also contributed to two recent compilations by the Second Language label – a kindred spirit to Clay Pipe.

The catalyst for Memories of Earth was the 2019 Moving to Mars exhibition at London’s Design Museum - which created a simulation of a future Martian settlement. For Rothon this triggered recollections of a childhood fascination with space – fuelled by the moon landings, visits to the London Planetarium and being taken aged six to see Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. “I recall it as a time when a science fiction-style future seemed just around the corner,” he says. He cites as another influential experience the landmark Cybernetics Serendipity show at the ICA, which featured collaborations between artists and scientists: machines were shown alongside artwork in a spirit of postwar optimism for the positive power of new technologies. “I actually remember very little about it other than it was very noisy and somewhat scary!”

Memories of Earth reflects a spectrum of emotional responses to the idea of space travel – from the optimism and wonder of those childhood dreams to the sense of disconnection, isolation and loss we might feel on a one-way trip to Mars... or beyond. The final, bittersweet track brings us back down to earth with a sense that perhaps it’s caring for our own planet that should be our priority.
Musically Memories of Earth draws on a varied palette of influences including early prog, electronica and European film soundtracks. This diversity of styles flows together to form an album that’s coherent but full of surprises. It also benefits from vocal contributions by acclaimed US musician Johanna Warren and actress/chanteuse Claudia Barton, who wrote and performs the words for the title track – a paean to Earth’s “soft, green bacterial surface”; its “deep, wet, blue mysteries”...

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: I bloody love Clay Pipe, and this new D Rothon release is a prime example of why. Brimming with the sort of soft focus haze I love in my instrumental music, 'Memories Of Earth' is a beautifully rich journey, part jazz part ambient and entirely brilliant. As ever, it's a buy-on-sight from me.

TRACK LISTING

1. Apeman, Spaceman
2.Cybernetics Serendipity
3. Eight Million Miles High
4. Aquarius Rising
5. West Of The Moon
6.The Stars Below Us.
7. The Ghosts We Bring
8.The Spaces Between
9. Further From Home
10. Memories Of Earth

David Boulter is a founding member of Tindersticks, he has made over 20 studio albums and film soundtracks with the band. Nottingham born, but based in Prague since 1998, under his own name he has worked on music for many films. These include an eight-part serial Pustina/Wasteland for HBO Europe, the American movie Five Nights In Maine and recently two documentaries with Turkish/Belgian director Volkan Uce. Yarmouth is his first solo LP.

The inspiration for Yarmouth came when David, arrived a day early for a show at the Arts Centre in Norwich, and made an impromptu visit by train to the seaside town where had spent his childhood holidays.

In a year when most of us have been unable to travel, Yarmouth offers an escape to summers past. It recalls the saturated colours of a John Hinde postcard in musical form. With a sound palette based around an old 1970’s Lowrey organ, flutes, violin, vintage tape echo and a Premiere vibraphone, it captures a dreamy side of Yarmouth. Sun- drenched childhood memories, long shadows on the sand, the sound of seagulls and waves breaking on the shore. The magic of the fair - the entrance guarded by a huge mechanical giant, club in hand, while the roller coaster rattles overhead on a backboard of painted mountains peaks. As the sun goes down, noise drifts out from the amusement arcades, and neon flickers on Marine Parade, lighting up the fountains in candy floss colours.

“As I stepped off the train, the weight of time passed hit me. I was overwhelmed by a sense of sadness and loss. As I walked along the streets, looking for Trudy’s, I didn’t expect her, but I did find the house. Slowly, as I recognised buildings, streets, memories. I began to smile. I hadn’t lost anything. Great Yarmouth had changed. So had I. But the warmth of those sunny childhood summers was still there.” David Boulter 2020

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There is nothing in this world that would make me miss a Clay Pipe release, and this one was CLOSE. One of the best labels around, i'm absolutely sure this will be amazing. Get in while you can!

TRACK LISTING

1. Across Sea To Sand
2.The Flower Clock
3 Looking For Trudy
4. Marine Parade
5. Sandcastles
6. The Milk Bar
7. Rusty Old Pedal Car
8. Across Sand To Sea Crab Claws
9. Roller Skates The Tower Ballroom
10. The Morning Mist
11. See Saw
12. Knickerbocker Glory
13. Roller Coaster Ride
14. The End Of The Pier

Clay Pipe is very happy to bring you Gilroy Mere’s third record on the label, after 2017’s ever popular ’Green Line’ came the flexi-disc EP ‘Over the Tracks’ earlier this year, which hinted at things to come. Adlestrop is a full length LP inspired by the remains of the rural railway stations, that were closed in the wake of the 1963 Beeching Report.

“This record started with Edward Thomas’s poem Adlestrop and a chance visit to the village that it takes its title from. I wanted to see the station, but found it was no longer there, all that remains is the old platform sign Adlestrop, now part of a local bus shelter. However as I walked around the village I was struck that; “all the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire” were still singing away - like ghosts from Thomas’ verse.

Visiting Adlestrop spurred me to get hold of a copy of the Beeching Report which, in Appendix 2, lists all the services and stations recommended for closure in the 1960s. The names read like an epic British poem, from halts to branch-line stops and stations and singular terminals for public schools, mines, ferries and even an asylum. There’s Ravenscar where a resort was planned but got no further in its construction than the station, and a hotel - the grid marked out for the roads never laid. Bethesda, a short branch line from Bangor up towards Snowdonia, was used for slate and passengers and is now just a quiet green valley, Christ’s Hospital on the old Cranleigh Line, opened with seven platforms to cope with the daily flood of pupils attending the famous school nearby which never came as it was a boarding school. Many of the stations have vanished, with just fields and car parks left in their place, some are repurposed as houses, or shops, or abandoned as artefacts of a lone-gone industrial past.

Armed with a digital recorder, and with a copy of Beechings Report as my guidebook I made notes and recordings on my travels around the country, and used them as the starting point for a set of pieces that try to capture the fading layers of history, in the areas where the stations had once stood making sure each track retains something of the real place within them. Back in my studio I reacted, improvised, and crafted musical responses to each station, trying to capture the ghosts and former lives of the stations and their imprint on the present.”

Gilroy Mere is Oliver Cherer who trading as Dollboy, Rhododendron, and Australian Testing Labs as well as his own name has meandered his way through the backwaters of left of centre English folk, ambient and electronic music, issuing numerous albums of original music to much critical acclaim via highly regarded boutique labels such as Static Caravan, Second Language, Deep Distance, Polytechnic Youth, and Awkward Formats

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: All of the :gesticulates everywhere: chaos meant I missed out on the first pressing of this but THANKFULLY, the good folk at Clay Pipe are doing a repress, and we're getting some! If you've not heard Gilroy Mere before, you're in for a treat. Gorgous, pastoral soft-focus synth music infused with the sensibilities of rural folk and heady ambience. A gorgous and perfectly balanced mix of wonderfully applied compositional skill and warming whimsy.

TRACK LISTING

1. Appendix 2
2. The Age Of The Train
3. Adlestrop
4. Bethesda In The Rain
5. End Of The Line (Aldeburgh)
6. Just A River
7. The Cranleigh Line
8. Torver & Coppermines
9. Christ’s Hospital
10. Black Dog Halt
11. Ravenscar
12. Star Crossing