Straw Bear on Oilbug Music

We’re releasing Black Bank through Oilbug, a relatively new label that already has a really strong blend of acts on its roster.

http://www.oilbugmusic.com/

It’s worked out really well for us to licence the record to Oilbug, in that they see themselves as collaborators as opposed to the usual (and rather skewed) label/artist dynamic.

We’ve long had connections with Dan Donovan (of King Kool, and one of Oilbug’s founders) and Archie of Burning Codes, so we feel pretty fortunate to be working alongside people we genuinely admire.

When Black Bank is released, you’ll be able to buy it from the Oilbug site.

Our new album out in Dec - release date soon...

“To live in the Fens is to receive strong doses of reality. The great flat monotony of reality; the wide empty space of reality.

Melancholia and self-murder are not unknown in the Fens ... How do you surmount reality, children?

How do you acquire, in a flat country, the tonic of elevated feelings?”
Waterland, Graham Swift.

Forgive the pretentious intro, but we wanted to get across just how much our new album has been informed by the place in which it was recorded.

The Cambridgeshire Fens are rather unfairly thought of as a bleak place, full of inbreeding and odd folk who eat their young.

But those who can get past all that stuff discover a genuinely beautiful part of the country. Some of photographer Bob Davis's pictures show the enormity of the sky in a place where there isn't much going on in the land ... http://bobdavisphotography.co.uk/p358993249

Other photos point to the weird in-betweenness of a place that's neither solid land nor water.

Bob very kindly agreed that we could use a stunning, Turner-esque image on our album cover ... we hope that the minimal design work lets this beautiful photo speak for itself.

More on the album shortly ... including (hopefully) a release date.

Straw Bear