Well, after numerous years and a several delays, Falling But Not Alone is out now:
I've written before about how this album had a bit of a torturous time of it, but wanted to expand on that, as the album itself is full of little stories. For a start, the record is a bit unlike other satan albums. Usually, I'll sit down in one stretch of time, and come up with enough material to fit on an album, then call it a day and box it off. Sometimes though, older tracks will pop up on newer albums - Twin, for example, was added to Time Lapse, despite being a few years old at that point, but it fit sonically with the rest of the album, so it didn't sound too out of place. In fact, Twin and FBNA's opening track 'All's Lost' were recorded at the same time, way back when, but just never got around to being released. I think at one point, the band had an idea to release them as a split double A-side single, but it never happened in the end, and they were shunted into the vault of unreleased tracks, which we tended to dip into when we needed something.
All's Lost was originally an instrumental, until I approached Manchester based electronica act She The Throne for a vocal. I've known STT for ages, and we even did our last tour as a duo with them back in 2019, before covid hit and satan went solo, so was thrilled when Alison agreed to put something on it. Both this one, and the aforementioned Twin, both had plenty of singers attached to them over the years as well - last time I counted I think 5 different singers were attached to do something on them at one point or another, but it was only when STT sent back a take that anything ever happened on it. To that, I am eternally grateful for them. Go check em out, they're amazing (and wicked live too)
Goodbye From A Slowly Sinking Ship is one of the newer pieces on here, and I finished this one off when I moved house in early 2020, just as lockdown was happening. That gave me plenty of time to focus on music - you'll have no doubt seen the amount of records that came out on the satan timeline around 2020-21, and this was part of that relentless recording period. I'd had a rough idea to replicate Shift, the 2018 EP we did for the same label that was putting this one out: Wolves and Vibrancy. I wanted a long, meandering, mainly synth based track that sort of ebbed and flowed, and I think I sort of nailed it. The main synth lines are cut up and re-pitched bits from various sample packs I'd started to buy around this time, which was a lot of fun.
Hours Pass was actually an off-cut from Time Lapse - the album mentioned a little earlier. Come to think of it, there was another off-cut from that album in the form of Conservatory, which only resurfaced as a free download on my Soundcloud page. Anyway, when I submitted TL to n5MD, the label that put it out, I sort of panicked and thought they'd want a huge sprawling album, so wanted to give them as much material as possible. When Mike gave his initial thoughts, it was to cut Hours Pass (which was a very late recording in that process anyway) and Conservatory, and replace it with Mingels. It would also help time-wise, as I think the record was running too long for vinyl at that point. Anyway, it worked and Hours Pass just sort of fell into the vault.
The last track, 'Hang In There, Baby!' (reference for the title here) was the last thing I did for this album, and I think by this point I was a bit strung out after so much writing and recording that I was doing at the time. I just about squeezed enough of my energy into it though, and wanted something that sounded quite nostalgic, and something that didn't have a guitar on it at all, so I cut up some pianos and played some glistening 80s synth over it. Was very cathartic, and sounded so nice to play - I could've sat for hours and played the same three notes again and again, but that wouldn't be very commercially friendly lol.
So yes, once all these were packaged together and sent off to Fabian at the label, we had quite a few setbacks. The initial idea for the record was hatched basically once we'd done Shift, but we were busy with other stuff and never quite got around to it. Once the band became a solo affair though, I decided to make some time, as Fabian was very enthusiastic about working with me, and didn't want to let him down or take the piss - he was putting money and time into the band's endeavours, so wanted to repay him.
However, things went pretty slowly - Wolves had a busy schedule, and vinyl wait times were pretty long, even then, so it was slipping backwards in the release timeline straight away. Then the mastering engineer who was supposed to work on it fell ill and couldn't complete it, so in came Aidan Baker of Nadja fame to finish it off, but then covid hit, and the pressing plants shut down for a while. Only when they started back up again did the album get the green light, but more delays (thanks Abba, thanks Adele) saw it pushed back to where it is now - January 2023, which is mad when you think it was 2018/19 when we first talked about it.
Right, anyway, hope you've enjoyed this little piece. The album's out now, and the shirts and vinyl are awesome and you should all go buy one!
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