Slowdive have announced plans to release a live album captured on their 2014 tour which marked their first live dates together in almost 20 years. You can hear a 2014 version of ‘Avalyn’ above. The track originally featured on their self-titled debut EP which was released 25 years ago today.
Writing in a Facebook post, the band said: "We had recorded the songs early in 1990 at The White House studio near Weston-super-Mare, a seaside town in the south west of England. We picked that studio in part as another Reading band "The Colour Mary" had used it for their previous demo, and they had become a local band with a big sound and seemingly a big future as a result. We would go on to poach their drummer Neil Carter, who played on the subsequent Morningrise EP. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The band lineup at the time of the recording of the Slowdive EP was – Neil Halstead, Rachel Goswell, Christian Savill, Nick Chaplin and Adrian Sell."
Speaking about ‘Avalyn’, they said: "We didn’t really have a structure for the song until we got to the studio. In fact, it was almost an afterthought. We had the bass part that was simply repeated all the way through, and Neil and Christian found that they could make weird noises with their guitars. One part almost sounds like a wind instrument. Otherwise it was really just composed on the spot, Rachel bringing the words and vocal melody – and we recorded it pretty much live, and possibly in a single take. We knew immediately that together with Slowdive, this was the direction the band was taking. Listening back to ‘Avalyn’ at that time, we couldn’t really believe that we’d come up with something that sounded like that when a few months earlier we were being talked about as ‘Reading’s answer to The Primitives’.
"When the band reformed for 2014, it seemed obvious to us to start our live shows by playing the Slowdive EP at the top of the set list. It sets out where we originally came from, and sets the scene for where we were going. And to celebrate that, we’d like to present a free live recording of Avalyn, performed during our USA / Canada tour last year. We are currently working on releasing the entire live set from that tour as a collection, so look out for news of that soon."
