Happy New Year

As the year ends once again and we enter another decade I’d like to thank a few people who kept things going for me in what has been somewhat of a challenging year. The main fun I had musically was working on the UTE 7″ and the Why Clanks CD and Book. They came at at time when I had broken my ankle and was virtually immobile so could at least stumble to the computer each morning to write music that had a purpose rather than stare into space. It gave me time to reflect also on how much I love my part of Yorkshire. The Aire Valley in particularly still gives me shivers and so it was a pleasure to write music that hopefully reflected long walks and days out I’d had there. Therefore big thanks to the UTE team (James Ocklefold, Michael C. Place and Matt Kelly) for getting me involved. Also big thanks to Howard Morrison at Paper Piano Press for keeping me busy in the latter part of the summer. I just loved how this one turned out and it was brilliant to see how it came together working in a pre-internet, cut and paste manner.

George Mastrokostas of Sound In Silence has always given me an outlet for musical endeavours that I may not have released otherwise and so I was excited that he wanted to put a CD out of my Western Edges project. This project came about after I’d moved house and didn’t have my usual recording gear set up and so worked on tracks just using synthetic sounds from the computer. Happily it has now become a project of its own and there is a further album in the works and we even played a gig with a further one planned for 2020! George also re-issued the Memory Drawings ‘Phantom Lights’ album we initially made as a tour CD. I’m glad this album has got another lease of life as its some of my favourite Memory Drawings music.

For more general support and encouragement thank you to Barrie Cummings at Home Assembly Music, my brother Chris and my girlfriend Julie all of whom to different degrees have had to listen to endless babbling about some track or other that I’m battling with that no-one will ever hear.

This unwanted Oscars speech is now almost over but the biggest thanks is to everyone out there who still buys stuff and supports what we do. I feel honoured each time a record comes out and people buy it. God knows what I’d do if that kind of support wasn’t there.

Happy New Year and all the best for 2020

Richard/The Declining Winter

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