Aeration

The singles for our third and fourth albums Prophecies (1997) and Odyssey (1998) were pretty much all four or six-track EPs, typically around fifteen minutes in duration. Odyssey yielded just three singles - the "different" Rangoon Fairytale, the entirely uncommercial Atlantis Rising, and finally the one obvious single on the album, Aeration.

Odyssey remains to this day our longest album, with thirteen tracks, which we quickly acknowledged as a mistake (that's why the follow-up Ephemeris only had eleven). It is, in retrospect, consistent but dull, with way too many long and downtempo songs, but the short uptempo section, right in the middle, does stand out, with The Sky at Night closing Side A, and Aeration kicking off Side B.

Having established that it would be the next single, we set about remixing it, coming up with an alternative instrumental version, Back Into the Deep, and an extended version which combined elements from the original and the instrumental, which was confusingly titled Back Into the Deep: Part II on its initial release (for the 2003 CD reissue, we changed it to Back Into the Deep: Extended, so it was a bit less confusing). We then edited the extended version down, and came up with an exclusive single mix too.

The b-sides initially included Serengeti and No News is Good News, but we thought the latter might have potential as a single, and Aeration was partly being released to promote the new remix album Iliad, so we took The Cold Light of Day off the album and swapped it with No News is Good News.