1. Welcome To Sunderland
2. Where I'm Coming From
3. Sea-Mist In The Morning
4. All Your Aspirations
5. Athaeneum Street
6. All The Fun Of The Fair
7. Things To Do On A Tuesday Night
8. Cosmetics (Part 2)
9. Not My Fight
10. Hiding Places
11. Self-Control
12. On 'Til Dawn

This album was all about my hometown of Sunderland and at one point it was one of my favourites, though unnaccountably, I don't think I've heard it for best part of 15 years, and a lot of it isn't holding up as well as I'd have hoped. Unusually, I do have some memories of the inspirations behind most of the tracks. "Sea-Mist...", for example, was obviously enough inspired by the sound of the foghorn at Seaburn which could often be heard early in the mornings, miles away at Ryhope, where I lived. "Where I'm Coming From" was specifically about Ryhope, about life on a council estate. The bit about being taken home by the police is a true story: I got caught climbing on the roof of Valley Road school with my mates, drinking bottles of Mad-Dog 20/20, which may explain it. "Athaeneum Street" is another true story, I suspect from a couple of years earlier, when I was stuck on some shit computer-literacy course and I kind of had a meltdown and ran out and up Athaeneum St, presumably towards the bus-station to gan yem. I was a bit surprised to see in the liner notes that this track featured synth samples by Order Of Elim: he was an American DnB artist at Soundclick - I think his name may have been Joel...? He was a part of that SC community, and I remember he made some proper bangers. That said, I don't remember how he got involved with this track. I'm pretty certain it wasn't a direct collab, and I don't think I ever remixed any of his tracks. Maybe he shared a sample pack he'd made? Probably that's likely it.

"All The Fun..." - I think, though couldn't swear to it, that this is about the old amusements and fairground at Seaburn. Seaburn was once a seaside resort, but by my time, it was well past its best days, and I remember it as pretty dismal. "Things To Do..." - I'm pretty sure this was about car twoks. I had a view of Leechmere Road from my bedroom, and sometimes saw hoisties being chased by the giss. "Cosmetics Pt 2" - if I remember rightly, this was supposed to be an allegory for how the city council were trying to attract investment into this wrecked post-industrial economy. That comes across, right? :-p I had actually thought that Part 1 was lost as I had absolutely no memory of it and I don't think it was ever released. However, it turns out I do still have the original Renoise file from February 2006: it's a fairly raw and apocalyptic sounding Amen-driven breakbeat instrumental track. Not great, and I can see why it was left off the album. The only other track I have a specific memory of is "Self-Control". This was inspired by a late-night conversation with, I think, a mate's younger brother, down by the subway at Hollycarrside (the one shown on the cover of The Long Dark Tunnel EP), when he was telling me about some series of mad dramas he'd gotten caught up in.

This album was my most vocal-heavy project to date, with fully half of the tracks having lyrics. The lyrics themselves are mostly pretty decent I reckon, but my vocals really sucked, but that's to be expected for tracks back then. The thing I'm more disappointed with is the compositions which are generally pretty rough, even if the production is occasionally ok-ish. There's a couple of good tracks in there, but over all, it's not as strong as I remembered it, though it could really benefit from some re-working / re-recording. This album was re-mixed in May 2007, and it seems I started a second re-mix in February 2010, though for some reason I only did three tracks. I'm not entirely sure, but I think I may have put this second re-mix on hold while I worked on Not For Sale, only to then never resume it. At any rate, I'll be making the 2007 version available. Who knows, maybe I'll go back and do a final clean-up on it sometime in the future.