Carnival (2005/2020) Limited Edition White Vinyl.
Carnival was focused around Michael's increasing creativity as a drummer and his developing writing partnership with Justin. It was recorded with producer Chris Tsangerides and mixed by Nat Chan. It's lyrical subjects and musical roots were as usual very eclectic, but it concluded with the special "Fireworks Night", an emotional response to the sudden and unexpected death of Robert that Autumn.
Redux Version: It was remixed in 2020 by Lee Smith and added to with B-sides and other tracks from that era, including ‘Rumour and Rapture’ originally recorded for Rev Hammer’s Freeborn John project.
We always felt that Carnival was the one album where the recording, mixing and mastering didn’t bring the end result close to what we had originally intended in the writing. So when Edel declared their interest in licensing and reissuing the album, we discovered four associated tracks (B-sides and unreleased songs) to add to it and saw an opportunity to ‘reimagine’ the album as a whole.
We are aware that it is very dangerous for any band to ‘go back’ (and especially unusual for us) – so we made one absolute rule, that we wouldn’t re-record anything and we’d ask Lee Smith, who mixed From Here and Winter, to remix it using only the original multi-tracks, without too much involvement from us. Some songs have changed very little, others quite a lot. And to our minds, this has worked well and has enhanced the album’s principle qualities, particularly the wealth of original musical ideas, at last arranged in a sonically satisfying way; and in the spirit of this ‘reimagining’, we have altered the order of the songs a little to include the additions - while our artist, Joolz Denby, has recreated the cover artwork in a wholly new original version for this beautiful LP.
Track Listing
Side 1
1. Water
2. BD3
3. Rumour and Rapture (1650)
4. Red Earth
Side 2
1. LS43
2. Island
3. Carlisle Road
4. One Bullet
Side 3
1. Bluebeat
2. Too Close to the Sun
3. Another Imperial Day
4. Prayer Flags
Side 4
1. Stoned, Fired and Full of Grace
2. Caslen (Christmas)
3. Fireworks Night
