Also back from the dawn of time

A few days ago I revealed that we've been preparing a brand new reissue of our 2006 album Dusk. That's still happening.

But there's more! We've also trawled through our archives to bring you all 21 bonus tracks from the five singles: Consequences, Beneath the Silent Skies, Bulletproof, The End, and the iDusk EP.

We talked about plonking them alongside the album itself, but we decided you would probably prefer to take this project in more manageable bite-size chunks, so we separated it into two: Dusk (the original album), and Dusk Archive (the collected singles, 2006-2008).

If that weren't enough, as a special bonus for downloaders, we've also tracked down the two original demos of Moving On and Echoes of Perfection which were released as special bonus tracks for the Consequences single in early 2007, and also a third demo from 2005 which has never before seen the light of day (the reasons for this should not be too difficult to work out).

The 24 tracks on Dusk Archive do admittedly have a total running time of nearly 100 minutes, meaning that a full trawl through the era will take you two and a half hours. But that's not bad for three years' work. As always, we firmly believe in quantity over quality.

Anyway, Dusk and Dusk Archive are both coming soon.

Back from the dawn of time

In 2006, we released an album called Dusk. Perhaps you remember it?

No, I didn't think so. It wasn't exactly widely released.

But the two or three years that followed were decisive for us. We released five singles from the album, each positively overflowing with bonus tracks (most of them were bigger than your average EP). Some of them were pretty successful. Depending on how you measure success, of course.

But by 2009, we were busy beavering away on what would ultimately become Transmission, and so its predecessor kind of got a bit forgotten. We left a few tracks online, but we neglected the full album. We're really sorry about that. If there's anything we can do to make it up to you...

Well, of course, there is! In a couple of weeks, Dusk is coming back! A brand new full-length version of the album in its pure, unadulterated form.

By which I mean that we haven't bothered remastering it or anything. It's true, we thought about it, but in the end we decided that for all its quirks and foibles, this is how we sounded in 2006. And that's how the record should stay.

What we have done is worked pretty hard on the packaging. To make up for the slightly spartan sleeve on the original release, you now get a luxuriant 16-page booklet full of new sleeve notes and photos from the era, many of them never before seen.

So, coming very shortly: a brand new reissue of our most successful album to date, Dusk.

Blood, Sweat and Tears

It seems appropriate to comment on Blood, Sweat and Tears now, having just thrown it out as a single. Here's the original album version:



Blood, Sweat and Tears started off life inspired by a Delerium track featuring Zoë Johnson on vocals, which opens with the line, "from every side, the cold wind blows." For some reason, "No matter where the wind blows," which was the original title of this song, seemed a good idea.

It may not be the most meaningful song ever, but it's got a good chorus, and fits quite nicely on Transmission, so that's how we got to where we are today.

In early 2012, we started thinking about what the third single from the album might be, and decided that this might be a good choice. Unfortunately, the single version took a bit of time to get right, and so in the end Here Comes the Summertime came first, but we were pretty pleased with how this single version ended up.



The lyrics:

No matter where the wind blows
My steps will follow through the snow
No matter when the rain stops
I’ll always know where I should go

Through blood, sweat and tears
I feel I’ve outlived all my fears
My heart is fixed to yours forever
I hope it’s there another year

No matter when the wind blew
Those endless hours still seemed so cruel
No matter where the world turned
It always brought me back to you

Through blood, sweat and tears
I feel I’ve outlived all my fears
My heart is fixed to yours forever
I hope it’s there another year

With the wind in the north
Your eyes just shone towards me
And when it turned to the south
Your smile broke through the thunderclouds

Through blood, sweat and tears
I feel I’ve outlived all my fears
My heart is fixed to yours forever
I hope it’s there another year

(R. Martin / S. Martin)

In the studio...

... working on new tracks with our producer. Now we know why the Juno has ever fewer slider caps.