This release is part one of a 3-album concept that will be released throughout 2009. Erased Tapes Records has been selected as DIY label of the week on Huw Stephens’ BBC Radio One show. Their beautiful lavish packaging is a sight to behold, especially when the LP carries a code for a free album download. After releasing four critically acclaimed albums with Milo and being the host of other production duties ranging from Get Cape. Wear Cape Fly to Enter Shikari, Lockey is emerging as the pre-eminent young British producer. Lockey’s music is supplemented on BEF by the vocal talents ex-My Architects conspiritor Aid Burrows. The creative partnership between the two was forged despite geographical difficulties: using a process not to dissimilar to Benjamin Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello’s Postal Service, Lockey constructed the music in isolation in Newcastle upon Tyne and then, via the magic of the internet, sent it on to the Warrington based Burrows who supplied lyrics and vocals before sending the music back to Lockey for mixing and Erased Tapes founder Robert Raths for co-production and mastering. This meant that neither Justin nor Aid never met together in the whole recording process. The result is an inspired collection of songs that are representative of the return of progressive, genre-defying music to the British Isles. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) sees Lockey liberated from the format of writing songs within a band and reveals him as a singular musician of enormous ability allied to limitless imagination. From ‘Throwing Little Stones’ evocation of pebbles dropping into calm waters courtesy of fragile piano chords to the machine-gun beats of ‘A Long Way From Home’, Chapter One is an impressively focused study in seemingly diametrically opposed musical forms merging together. The British Expeditionary Force sees Lockey and Burrows combine ethereal soundscapes, sonorous guitars, beautifully fragile vocal and vocoder work, Lockey’s now trademark sensitivity to drum sounds and Burrows’ inclement lyrics together to form something akin to My Bloody Valentine filtered through the best of Brian Eno with a smattering of the Iceland inspired sonic vistas of Sigur Rós. It is a snapshot of late night urban life, the eerie sense that something wicked this way comes on a long walk home amongst deserted streets that betray both the residual menace and drink fuelled revelry of only a few hours previous. It is the sound of 21st Century northern England. It’s heralds the arrival of the BEF. The live incarnation of Burrows’ and Lockey’s vision takes on the understated glistening haze of the record and morphs it into something altogether bigger, the instantly recognisable grit of YCNI:M guitars veering into indeterminate meltdown being augmented by a 7-piece electro-orchestra incorporating twin drummers, piano, and intensely organic sounding synths. http://erasedtapes.com ”Do you realise that we have managed to make this entire thing without |any of the people working on it actually meeting in real life!? I haven’t seen Aid for about a year and a half!|I’ve never met you guys before.|This whole thing has been done via email and telephone calls. Aid and me have lived with these songs for sooo long.|We are finally happy to blow the world apart with them. |Dead proud.” - Justin in an email to Robert |
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