New Vinyl

...always a joy. Darren Hayman's new album finally arrived yesterday after a certain amount of postal misunderstanding so I listened to it over breakfast, between doing my democratic duty and wrangling a slightly anarchic children's storytime. Otherwise a quiet day, after the exertions of the previous - met Beck for a falafel wrap and wandered over to shoot the breeze with the Printmakers later on. Darren's new record is very good, by the way, the first of a trilogy about rural life based on a fascinating project to visit each of the  'Thankful Villages'that lost no-one to the Great War and create a piece of music or a song inspired by his surroundings: field recordings, ambient sound, other voices, nostalgia, a palpable sense of place - moving and strangely peaceful, it set me up very nicely for the day...