ARTIST: Ellis Island Sound
TITLE: The Good Seed
LABEL: Peacefrog
GENRE: Acoustic
BITRATE: 191 kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 0h 46min total
RELEASE DATE: 2007-02-19
RIP DATE: 2007-01-16

Track List

01. Swords Reversed 1               1:36
02. Angel's Way                     2:30
03. Auction Of Promises             2:32
04. The Villagers                   2:51
05. Cuckoo Hill                     1:43
06. Count The Cars                  1:27
07. The Plagal Walk                 1:39
08. Density Ratio                   5:05
09. Swords Reversed 2               1:14
10. Building A Table                2:33
11. Dark Lane                       1:59
12. Unwinding Not Unravelling       3:00
13. The Waveney Waltz               2:31
14. Hills Of Braithwaite            1:56
15. Reeds For Arthur                0:52
16. Summoning The Pharaoh           3:11
17. The Orchid                      2:08
18. Last Days Of John Train         2:28
19. Concertina Theory               1:02
20. Starlight Madrigal              3:46

Release Notes:

Sometimes a change is as good as a rest. So it proved for Ellis Island
Sound’s Pete Astor and David Sheppard, whose records (together as EIS
and in their various alternative guises such as the Wisdom Of Harry,
Phelan Sheppard and State River Widening) have generally been cooked
up in London Town, slotted in amid a mass of life commitments and
innumerable, intertwining creative projects. This time the duo
determined to change the environment, turning their back on the
capital and heading out to the country to cut what would become The
Good Seed - the first full album proper from a combo whose almost
decade-long existence has played out across a miscellany of EPs, mini
albums and singles (though Heavenly/EMI released a beautifully
realised assemblage of EIS singles and remixes back in 2003).

With no label yet in place, the pair were free to pursue pastures new,
unhampered by expectations of any kind. Having rented a tiny converted
chapel in lonely countryside right on the Norfolk/Suffolk border (it
satisfied the duo’s key criteria of being “dirt cheap and as far away
from any neighbours as we could find,”) the pair packed a station
wagon with supplies and every acoustic instrument they owned -
everything from parlour guitars to ukuleles, harmoniums, dulcimers and
goat skin drums – and, as the summer burned its last, headed east.
Also in the car were a Fostex R- 8 reel-to-reel machine, a microphone,
several boxes of magnetic tape, a borrowed Casio SK8 mini sampler, a
stylophone, a copy of Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica and a
pair of bicycles.

Installed in their country locale, overlooked by a field of cows and
the occasional B52 bomber from a nearby US Air Force base, Astor and
Sheppard quickly set about a disciplined but agreeable regime –
cutting tracks after breakfast, in the afternoon and late into the
night, interspersing the work with bike excursions to local village
pubs, churchyards and abandoned Second World War gun emplacements.
Duly enlivened, a body of brief, fragile but instantly involving
pieces began rapidly emerging, with the duo playing all the
instruments in the time honoured way, using no editing or ‘drop-ins’.
That is to say they played from start to finish on every track, while
tape rolled – unheard of in the age of computers, micro-editing, Pro-
tools etc. Hence short tracks with no extended ‘filler’ sections - no
fat only lean.  With the songs - and an instantly evocative sound - in
place, they invited their friend Josh Hillman (from the Willard Grant
Experience) to come by and bow some violin, viola and saw. He picked
up on the special atmosphere immediately and slotted right in.

The location and circumstance of the recording made palpable impact on
the music in several ways. There is no bass drum on The Good Seed, for
instance, simply because they couldn’t fit one in the car! There were
less pragmatic influences too. The unexpectedly star-spangled majesty
of the rural East Anglian night was reflected in the awed atmospheres
of Starlight Madrigal; while the hymnal Auction Of Promises was named
after a poster spied outside a local church. Tracks like Angel’s Way,
Dark Lane and Cuckoo Hill all take inspiration from evocatively named
nearby localities, while the rustic, beguiling but ever-so-slightly
sinister The Villagers needs no further explanation.

An unfettered rural quality permeates much of the record; but like the
vintage bombers droning low over the fieldscapes, there is retro-
modernist technology hovering amid The Good Seed’s analogue innocence.
A pulsating Bentley Rhythm Ace drum machine lends a motorik
underpinning to the melodious, life-affirming Building A Table and the
wearily lovely The Waveney Waltz, while the initially pastoral Density
Ratio (named after a crop rotation diagram) soon takes wing in a
formation of stylophones, rhythm generators and overdriven harmoniums.
The Casio SK-8, meanwhile, helped provide the murmuring incantations
beneath Count The Cars’ poignant reverie and the after-hours, free-
Jazz mantras of Summoning The Pharaoh.

Remarkably, The Good Seed’s twenty songs were completed in seven
miraculous September days – testament to the productivity of
concentrated music making and the instrumental versatility of Messrs
Sheppard and Astor.  A good deal more than a simple case of ‘getting
their shit together in the country,’ The Good Seed is a document of a
time and a place, closer in many ways to location film-making than
run-of-the-mill recording. One listen to a clutch of rough mixes was
all it took to have Peacefrog (home of Jose Gonzalez and Nouvelle
Vague) proffering contracts.

Human, affecting and packed to the gills with warm, timeless melody,
The Good Seed draws on the spirit of Harmonia, The Penguin Cafe
Orchestra, Boards Of Canada, Wim Wenders ’70s film soundtracks,
various folk forms and much else besides - all of it teased and
manipulated into something preternaturally English which ultimately
sounds unlike any other record.