This past November 29, BBC 6 Music announced the albums of the year for the different announcers that are part of the radio station. Each announcer mentioned one album and Mark Radcliffe chose “Overwintering” by LIGHTNING IN A TWILIGHT HOUR which will be included in the playlist created by BBC 6 along with the rest of the selected albums and will also be a featured album on December 26. This is a new landmark in Bobby Wratten’s extensive career, as he was a part of the beloved group THE FIELD MICE in the eighties, then NORTHERN PICTURE LIBRARY, and later founded TREMBLING BLUE STARS. In 2004, our greatest dream came true – he signed with Elefant Records to release his last albums as TREMBLING BLUE STARS for the world and begin his next adventure, LIGHTNING IN A TWILIGHT HOUR, under our wing. This is recognition for a sublime album that works within the diverse parameters that have characterized Wratten’s career: melancholy ambiance, a pop spirit and sonic experimentation. It is an album full of great songs, on the surface emotions and inspiration from a unique personality in the history of pop: Bobby Wratten. [ Read more ]

“Overwintering” is the new album from Bobby Wratten (THE FIELD MICE, TREMBLING BLUE STARS), recording as LIGHTNING IN A TWILIGHT HOUR. The release follows on from the recent stand-alone 7″ “The Circling Of The Seasons” and the 2015 album “Fragments Of A Former Moon”.

A collection of eleven songs overseen in collaboration with Ian Catt; a partnership dating back to the earliest days of the regularly referenced THE FIELD MICE. Both Anne Mari Davies and Michael Hiscock from THE FIELD MICE feature throughout this latest addition to Bobby‘s discography. Also present is Beth Arzy (TREMBLING BLUE STARS, JETSTREAM PONY, THE LUXEMBOURG SIGNAL), and Harvey Brown who adds guitar to the record’s penultimate track.

While some songs entered the studio fully formed, more than half of “Overwintering” began life as purely musical landscapes before beginning a journey, eventually resulting in songs like the opener, “Lincoln Green”; a subtle introduction to this world of people and places, text and texture. The hypnotic psychedelia of “Delphinium” follows, featuring the first of four lead vocals by Anne Mari Davies.

Side one draws to a close with “Leaf Fall Is Over”; a pop song that holds an inner darkness exploring the rarely addressed theme of old age. “All I want is to escape, but I cannot run / Away, away, from this shadow I& [ Read more ]

Six years after his last release for Elefant Records, Bobby Wratten(THE FIELD MICE, TREMBLING BLUE STARS), returns under his LIGHTNING IN A TWILIGHT HOUR moniker. Having released a Double-LP, a 10″, and a 12″ for Elefant, plus a cassette for Touch subsidiary The Tapeworm, this release marks the first ever LIGHTNING IN A TWILIGHT HOUR 7″ Single.

Produced in association with long term collaborator Ian Catt, these two songs trailer but do not feature on, the forthcoming second LIGHTNING IN A TWILIGHT HOUR album. Bobby and Ian have worked together since the first ever recordings of the increasingly influential THE FIELD MICE. Other long-term fellow travellers are also present: Anne Mari Davies (THE FIELD MICE, NORTHERN PICTURE LIBRARY, TREMBLING BLUE STARS), Beth Arzy(TREMBLING BLUE STARS, JETSTREAM PONY, THE LUXEMBOURG SIGNAL) and Michael Hiscock (bassist and co-founder of THE FIELD MICE).

The open tuned guitars and layered harmonies of the A-side, “The Circling Of The Seasons”, belong to the more pop influenced end of the musical spectrum. The B-side, “Neuchâtel”, on the other hand, ventures into darker waters. A distorted single chord and a broken up wordless vocal creating a mood piece. Here we have the two sides of LIGHTNING IN A TWILIGHT HOUR on a single record.

This stand-alone white vinyl 7″ sets the scene for the forthcoming sophomore LIGHTNING IN A TWILIGHT HOUR album due in the next few weeks.

TRACKLIST: 01. [ Read more ]

Tracklist: 

Abandoned Islands ( A side 18:16 minutes)

Suspended Animation (B side 17:57 minutes)

It features two brand new long-form compositions – "Abandoned Islands", whereby a repeating series of simple phrases relies on increased effects to achieve the movement within the piece, and "Suspended Animation" featuring the aforementioned Barker-Davies and a close mic-ed portable cassette player providing a subtle rhythm, a nod to the intended format. Both recordings were made in late February 2017 and both feature field recordings made in Liverpool in April 2016.

https://the-tapeworm.bandcamp.com/album/quiet-actions [ Read more ]

12” MINI-LP [White Colour Vinyl] [Limited Edition of 500 copies] / DIGITAL MINI ALBUM   

TRACKLIST: 01 The Sky Beyond The Sky  02 Black Circles  03 Krzysztof Kieślowski's Lullaby 04 Notebooks / Lenticular Clouds (For Roy Montgomery) / My Own Antarctica   

Absence  

Agnes Martin  

Anne Sexton  

Antarctica  

Autumn  

"But I won't find you"  

"Can you still see mecategoría"  

Curiosity  

Dominoes  

Drumless  

Extended play  

"The faint glow of the slightly unreal"  

Flying Saucer Attack's 'Further'  

Frame by frame  

Giving nothing away  

Grant McLennan  

Hard cuts  

Invisibility  

Krzysztof Kieślowski  

Lenticular clouds  

Liverpool  

Michael Head  

Nothing  

Painting by Sabrina Joy  

"The quiet light"  

Random word generator  

Roy Montgomery  

September to December  

Short wave static  

Silence   Sorcery  

Tape hiss  

To the shores of Lake Placid  

Will you please be quiet, pleasecategoría  

Within  

Zoo records  

After the dream 

[ Read more ]

 This VIDEO sums up our year

Playlist "Elefant Moments 2015" on SPOTIFY

Playlist Elefant Video-Clips 2015 on Youtube    

Playlist "Elefant Moments" 2010-2011-2012-2013-2014-2015" on YouTube    

[ Read more ]

Available for ORDER on our website!

The moment has finally arrived and we couldn’t be happier or more satisfied – we have LIGHTNING IN A TWILIGHT HOUR’s first album in our hands. LIGHTNING IN A TWILIGHT HOUR is Bobby Wratten’s new project, which we were talking about recently because of the introductory Mini-LP “Slow Changes”. And there is not a doubt in our minds that Bobby Wratten’s fans are going to feel tremendous happiness when they listen to the songs that make up this first LP, “Fragments Of A Former Moon”.

It’s an album that shows off the two most remarkable facets of the songwriter: pop melodies that intertwine melancholic and evocative shades with an ambiance of experimentation in which the music becomes a bucolic, intoxicating landscape. In this first section we definitely include the album’s opening song, “The Memory Museum”, which carries the songwriter’s unmistakable mark, and which reminds us of other songs from the TREMBLING BLUE STARS period. “The Pattern Room” has a touch of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop about it and sees the band with Trish Keenan of BROADCAST very much in their thoughts on this “Die Brücke” inspired song. “The Passerby” delves into the melancholy of Mark Hollis’s more introspective albums, with certain baroque touches, while “Fever Dreams Of Emilia” and “Taking The Figure Out Of T [ Read more ]

Available for ORDER on our website!!

We already announced it a few months ago, and now we finally have it in our hands – the first release from Bobby Wratten’s new project, LIGHTNING IN A TWILIGHT HOUR. It’s a Mini-LP with 7 songs that will be released on 10” transparent vinyl, as well as digitally. And as we have already mentioned, the group’s members include the regular suspects like Beth Arzy, and Michael Hiscock, who was the bassist in THE FIELD MICE (Bobby’s seminal band). This partnership has contributed to pieces like the ones that make up “Slow Changes,” an album where Wratten lets his more ambient and experimental side loose, but without letting go of his delicate and pure pop songs.

“Everyone Talks About The Weather” has one of those trademark choruses that recites a devastating line that is also healing at the same time: “I’m not asking to be saved.” “The Death of Silence” grows among halos of mystery and emotional turbulence into what is probably one of Bobby Wratten’s best songs. It is simultaneously hypnotic and powerful and full of light. “Ancient Fiction” closes the first side among echoes of JOY DIVISION, Seventeen Seconds era CURE and THE SOUND, with those delicious and emotive arrangements. The B-side leaves more room for sonic experimentation, one of the greatest passions of our admired songwriter. “Interference” is [ Read more ]

Few things can make us as happy during Elefant Records’ 25th anniversary as the news that we’re about to tell you. One of our favorite composers, Bobby Wratten – who has been behind projects as important for our label as THE FIELD MICE, NORTHERN PICTURE LIBRARY, and TREMBLING BLUE STARS – has a new project: LIGHTNING IN A TWILIGHT HOUR. In this project, he has joined forces again with Beth Arzy (TREMBLING BLUE STARS, ABERDEEN, THE LUXEMBOURG SIGNAL), and he is counting on the collaboration of his old friend Michael Hiscock, who was the bassist of THE FIELD MICE. Anne Mari Barker-Davies alsoparticipates on these new songs, as does the producer Ian Catt, who has worked with Bobby on all of his albums, from that very first THE FIELD MICE single in 1988, “Emma’s House”, to the last TREMBLING BLUE STARS release in 2011.

And what better way to present this new adventure from Bobby Wratten than by giving you all a song from what will be their debut album, as a giftí “The Memory Museum” has some of the constants that were the stars of his last albums: evanescent atmospheres, crystalline guitars, and sweet voices, to which we have to add Hiscock’s sinuous bass, which gives the song an even stronger touch of mystery. But this is just an appetizer, and we can assure you that his next releases contain many more ingredients that will definitely surprise newcomers and exhilarate fans.

The first release will be a Min [ Read more ]