The Flightpath Estate And The Crescents

You might remember that earlier this year me and my friends in The Flightpath Estate put out an album, Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 1. What started as a pub conversation between a handful of us became a reality and a slew of artists, musicians and producers connected to Andrew Weatherall or members of the Flightpath Estate Facebook group donated a track each to us, to release as a compilation album which we put out on Golden Lion Sounds. 

Various jaw dropping things happened around and following its release; we sold 500 copies in a day in February and decided to do a second pressing which also sold out; Lauren Laverne made it her Compilation of The Week on 6 Music and played three tracks from it; Piccadilly Records gave over their whole shop window to it and thirty six copies of Rusty's beautiful sleeve art adorned the shop's front window for a few hours. 

The music on the album was first rate, everyone giving us great tracks- we had a previously unreleased Two Lone Swordsmen track, The Crescents, and brand new tracks by Sons Of Slough, Timothy J. Fairplay, Justin Robertson's Deadstock 33s, Richard Sen, Rude Audio, 10:40, Hardway Bros, The Light Brigade (I think everyone knows by now that this is David Holmes) and a cover of Smokebelch by Andy Bell. Matt Hum from The Golden Lion stitched the ten tracks from the album into one mix before the album came out which you can listen to here if you don't have a physical copy of the album. 

One of the things were were really sure about from the start was that any monies raised and left over after costs had been dealt with would go to charity. There are four chosen charities connected to Andrew- Crisis, Amnesty International, The Multiple Sclerosis Society, and The Thrombosis Society. Last week the final tying up of loose ends was dealt with and we found that we had raised a net total of £5928, which split four ways saw each charity receive a donation of £1482. I wrote a piece for Crisis which they published at their website (although embarrassingly there's a word missing from my text near the end-  the penultimate line reads 'Thank you to everyone involved- all the artists, Waka, Gig and Matt at The Golden Lion, Rusty for the artwork, everyone who shared news about it online and bought into the (and bought a copy) of the album and mainly to Andrew Weatherall for being the inspiration' but should read 'bought into the idea (and bought a copy) of the album...'. Proof reading your own text is difficult eh?).

We've been blown away at every step along the way with the album- obviously we're really pleased to have raised such an amount of money for charity. And now that we've tied up all the loose ends with Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 1 we can start thinking about a follow up, Volume 2...

The Crescents is the opening the track on our album, a three minute piece of ambient music by Andrew and Keith Tenniswood that originally only saw the light of day on a compilation of musical odds and ends called Still My World that was put together in 2003, a promotional CD for the Italian fashion house Zegna in Japan. Martin had a copy of this (quite rare) CD. We all loved The Crescents and chanced our arm contacting Rotters Golf Club and asking if we could license it for our album. Still My World has been released on vinyl this year as part of Record Shop Day, in a brand new sleeve with a lovely piece of writing by Keith about how he and Andrew worked in the studio. 

Still My World has since been released digitally and there's a continuous mix too, the ten tracks sequenced together with no gaps. Two of the tracks on Still My World, And Then The Walls Fell and Compulsion, were previously released as a 7" single on Andrew's Hidden Library imprint, Hidden Library 002 (both titled Untitled on that release). The remaining eight tracks were all new to Still My World. Thirty six minutes of magic from TLS world.