The Lost Album The Lost Album was lost in 1995. It is said that when a piece of art is complete, the artists must move aside, and allow it to go its own way. Well the lost album is finally in that position. It has been on a long and arduous journey: lost, imprisoned, neglected, found, rescued, rehabilitated, bathed, clothed and now after living ten long years in various dungeons, safe houses and lawyers offices. It is released, to smell the sweet scent of freedom. It started life when the satirical poet Murray Lachlan Young was signed on a budget record deal to Almo Sounds, set up five years after Herb Albert and Jerry Moss sold A&M Records for about $500m to Megalith Corp, Universal. The head of Almo, Alan Jones, in his search to make a genuinely original and groundbreaking spoken word studio album with Murray, commissioned 1980s pioneer electronic groove band Shriekback to bring music to the project. They first met among the cakes and coffee at Patisserie Valerie on Old Compton St, Soho, London. They consisted of: Barry Andrews, Martyn Barker, Mark Raudva, Lu Edmonds and Simon Edwards and producer Marcus Dravs who apart from work with his mentor Brian Eno had been with Bjork, Peter Gabriel and many others). The strange collective of Shriekback had on the whole given up being members of the mainstream music business and had gone according to many in the industry “ Jungly” they were working with overtone throat singers in Siberia, Gypsies in Istanbul anything to expand their musical out look, hence the mere presence of so many weirdo’s in one room gave the counter cultural twist that Alan Jones desired and instantly drew the lost album underground. At further meetings in the Archery Tavern in Bayswater. London, Marcus and Murray decided a way ahead – the Shreexs would jam with whatever instruments they felt would fit a particular theme. This would allow artistic freedom but prevent over involvement with the details. After 2 days they left the burning incense and massed candles of Metropolis studios London clutching a vast array of exotic instruments and the knowledge that a huge amount of raw material was safely in the can. After a break, Murray and Marcus reconvened in the darkness of the Cloth Shop studios, Portobello Rd. London, and started to pull the album together, laying vocals over the tracks from Metropolis. Everything was done very quickly until they ran into the epic track “The Haggis”. They went way over the tiny budget in bringing in other musicians on top of the Shriex’ great drum and bass tracks which gave a foundation for Ben Paley’s fiddle, Oscar Olochlain’s guitar and Steffen Hanigan’s bagpipes and low whistles; even an actor friend, Jerome Wright, came along to perform the epic rebel yell at the end. A year drifted by while Almo thought about marketing strategy. Then disaster struck. Alan Jones was fired as head of Almo and Murray was left awaiting the successor. Finally he was summoned by the new head of Almo ex Zomba records boss, Ralf Simon. Insiders at Almo already feared the worst for Murray as the visionary qualities of Alan Jones were replaced by the pragmatism and hard business sense of Ralf Simon.When Murray emerged from the meeting proclaiming he didn’t like Ralf’s Cashmere jumper it was widely accepted that, for the lost Album and Murray’s career the end was nigh. As the scrap heap loomed large Murray made a frantic visit to AandR man Razz Gold who had just been taken on by the new maverick head of EMI UK, Clive Black. They signed Murray almost instantly with a plan to elevate his talent to an international level. They bought all Murray’s back catalogue from Almo and promptly dumped the lost album in favour of a much more expensive and swanky project with the world famous talent of Producer Chris Thomas. The story then hit the national and international press Murray was suddenly The Million Pound Poet and the lost album promptly sank into EMI’s EGUM (Elephants’ Graveyard of Unreleased Music). The EMI story is very long and well worth telling but for present purposes let us say that the deal melted into an orgy of intrigue, scandal and sackings. The Net result for Murray; was a big pay-off, a gagging order from the lawyers and the obligatory retreat to become strange, bearded and live in a Sussex wood. Some years later whilst pretending to be the landlord of a fictitious country pub “The Rotting Ash”, Murray was contacted by Shriekback with a request to use some small parts of the instrumental work from the original Metropolis sessions to pad out a forthcoming album. Soon after this, serious thought started about how to reclaim the work and give it the release it must deserve. In 2001 Murray approached EMI and asked for the tapes. In a move quite out of character for the corporation EMI sold the tapes to him for one pound (£1). Two years later Murray went to the small Tring studio of audio producer Robert Nichol and compiled the album trawling through 20 hours of DAT tapes in an attempt to find missing tracks and sonic segues, plus working out a running order. A couple of months later this was sent to Lu Edmunds and he asked if Shriekback could give it a few extra touches – EQ and mastering. They met at Kennington tube station 13th Feb 2004 and Murray handed over a plastic bag of ADAT tapes. Lou cycled away into the Brixton smog to contact Mark Raudva who then tweaked, twiddled started the final process. A singing bowl here, an electric seagull sample there and eventually on, to the final cut. So that’s it, the story of the lost Album. We do not expect it to storm the Album charts or make the News at ten. No, it is far too interesting for that. The only desire of the creators of this Lost Album, is for it to be given a chance to finally speak for itself. Thanks for listening.