Berial at Bevill's Leam 12inch Available Again

 

Originally released in Jan 2023 on Castles in Space. Burial at Bevill's Leam sold out very quickly.
The plan was not to repress and leave it as a limited release that was now no longer available on vinyl. However after a recent tidy up and change of distributor at Castles in Space, a few of these red 12inch singles appeared. A few are now on sale again on the Castles in Space Bandcamp page and myself and Mr Powell have a few to make available soon.

When recording the album “Sad Old Tatty Bunting”, I decided it needed a spoken word track. I wanted to mix this in the style of The Velvet Underground track, 'The Gift', with the vocals hard panned to the left and music to the right. I approached singer/songwriter Douglas E Powell and asked him if he would be interested in writing a short story for this purpose. Doug came back to me sometime later with a 13/14 minute tale about ancient giant crabs and a burial at a place called 'Bevill’s Leam'.

I loved the story, however it was too long, way too long. There was only about 7 minutes spare for the last track on the album. So Doug went back to work on it and presented me with a shortened version. The voice was recorded and mixed, hard panning left and right.

“Sad Old Tatty Bunting” was released on Castles in Space in Feb 2022.

In the Spring of 2022 I started thinking about the full version of 'Bevill’s Leam', and started to think that we should revisit the track in order to record and release the long version using Doug’s full text as originally planned.

I told my label, Castles in Space that I wanted to do the 12” in the style of a DIY white label. We agreed on no cover artwork and only a white sleeve with an A5 paper insert. Taking inspiration from Public Image’s “Metal Box” a red typewriter font was chosen for all the text. Colin Morrison at CiS proposed a red vinyl pressing because he’s like that.

So, with all the label details worked out, the last remaining problem we had was that Doug no longer had the original full story! So in double quick time he set to work and re-wrote and re-recorded the whole thing. It turned out Longer, darker and better.

Myself and long time friend and producer Jack Packer set to work remixing the new version of 'Bevill’s Leam'. Some new tracks were laid down with additional sounds and effects and then Doug’s new extended vocal (sounding amazing) was sewn into the mix.

This new version of the track is very different from the album version, having a fuller sound and sharper clarity. Doug’s vocal was perfect, and the new musical additions created a more balanced and atmospheric feel. The B side instrumental version was slightly extended, and again some new sounds and effects added.

So there you have it…the full story of Burial at Bevill’s Leam in glorious hand numbered,
red 12" 45rpm format.