Behind the Waterfall

After our fourth album Odyssey (1998), we found ourselves in an interesting situation. We had a huge backlog of songs, most of which weren't quite good enough for an album, but some did still show some promise. Meanwhile, by late 1999, we were already working on what would eventually become Ephemeris (2001), and knew that none of the older tracks would really fit alongside the new ones.

For those of you who weren't there at the time, the end of the twentieth century also saw a lot of people looking back at their past, and for us it seemed a good opportunity to finish our first period, the early days. So Ephemeris would mark the start of a new era.

Hence Behind the Waterfall, released on this day in 1999. On its initial release, it was a four-track EP, featuring Behind the Waterfall, Rome Wasn't Built, Annotated Dream, and Avalon.

The title track is typical of the era - it's actually quite good, but the lyrics are appalling. Twelve years later, we re-recorded it with a new lyric, which you might be able to hear soon. In those days, we always made a point of writing one of the tracks on our own, so Annotated Dream is one of mine, and Avalon is one of Simon's. I can't think of anything to say about Rome Wasn't Built.

Then in 2001, a few months after Ephemeris, we decided we were actually quite fond of Behind the Waterfall, and so it became the first of our reissued releases, accompanied by three more previously unreleased songs - the daft Friends in High Places, The Chaos Theory, which was only ever released in the form of a six minute long 12" version, and the inevitable closing track And Finally...