London label and record shop World Of Echo has announced details of a new compilation album to mark its fourth anniversary.
The album, titled Thorn Valley and set for release in November, features 20 tracks selected from across the DIY underground, from artists including Valentina Magaletti, Still House Plants and Exek. The first cut to be revealed from the record is a beautiful collaboration between Tara Clerkin and Sunny Joe Paradisos, entitled ‘Castlefields’, which you can listen to exclusively via tQ above. Read a lengthy statement from both artists about the track below.
Thorn Valley will be released on digital formats, and in a limited run of 500 vinyl copies. The vinyl edition will also come with ‘seed postcards’ which can be planted. You can pre-order it here, where you can also find a full tracklist for the compilation.
Tara Clerkin and Sunny Joe Paradiso said the following about their new track:
"Castlefields is a suburb in the Tudor market town of Shrewsbury, where me and my mom moved in with my stepdad and stepbrothers when I was a teenager. A combination of old stone country cottages, red brick factory terraces, ’30s council estates, new build estates and derelict industrial buildings. One of which, the old Maltings and Flax Mill, the first steel frame building in the world, or the ‘first skyscraper’ as some locals proudly proclaim, is near fully renovated as a museum/commercial and office space. The local Indian and Chinese takeaways which are on the edge of the site have received compulsory purchase orders and are soon to be demolished.
"Like the neighbouring areas of Spring Gardens, Cherry Orchard and Mount Pleasant, their names serve as reminders of the landscapes buried beneath them as industrialisation swept through the region and stone and tree were replaced by brick and steel.
"By day, pensioners’ garden lawns are adorned with faded gnomes in front of rows of prefab bungalows, menacing dogs bark from behind fences. At night, boy racers roar down the deserted main road, people stagger home from town, shouting into the silent streets.
"On a warm spring day we take a walk behind my parents’ house. Past the rows of bungalows, passing the one where my grandparents both lived for a few years and then died, after leaving the drama and noise of Birmingham and our extended family for a short and lonely twilight, one of peaceful isolation.
"Behind it runs the river Severn leading into town, which we follow down a tree lined park. We pass a small field amidst the houses with a pony and a few goats and chickens, remnants of a pastoral past.
"Along the banks we find a small pebble beach with children paddling, people are fishing with rods or magnets, or jogging or dog walking. We follow the path, travelling against the current of the slowly flowing river, the people on its banks move unhurriedly in the mild afternoon air.
"We pass beneath the great old Victorian railway bridge where the air becomes damp and cool. Trains rumble overhead, the fluttering of a pigeons’ wings, the solitary drip of water on cobblestones, their echoes mingle.
"We pass behind grand old Victorian houses overlooking the river, skewed Tudor buildings, the old shopping centre which is built in mock Tudor style and will also soon be torn down. Then past the new shopping centre, park, schools, ancient abbey, fields, farms, and on eventually into the Welsh hills.
"Or do we turn back the other way and follow the rivers flow, down to Bristol and on into the Severn Estuary, then the Bristol Channel, which meets the Celtic Sea?"
World Of Echo will release Thorn Valley on November 11, 2022.
