In The Blake Midwinter

Lost for words re: best of lists for 2005. No longer sure when anything was released or why the year matters this close in so this will be the first in a series of imagined releases for 2006:

Peter Christopherson, Thighpaulsandra, Otto Avery and Kate Bush are to release a double Christmas 12":

Gyre - In the Blake Midwinter

The A side is a single, extended and modulated, fluttering sigh, gradually morphing into a descending cello phrase.

The AA side will be blank and etched with the phrase: The Shark Must Be Loved Above All

The B side will be a frenetically speeded down re-working of Momus's The Homosexual (from Tender Pervert) with Kate Bush and Otto Avery taking alternate verses before coming together for the final verse with a hastily assembled midnight mass of a chorus including: Neil Young, (a sampled) Leonard Cohen, Vashti Bunyan, Kempernorton (aka Joanna Newsom), Liz Fraser, Marc Almond, Diamana Galas, Roger Wootton (from Comus), Bill Bailey, Steve Albini and Madonna.

The only change to the lyrics will be replacing the word "husbands" with the speeded up phrase "Holy Guardian Angels Above As Now in Alltime"

But it's the BB side where all the fun begins and it's the track I'm most looking forward to receiving.

1. Begins with the sound of a heartbeat becoming increasingly irregular and then stopping.
2. The heartbeat is crossed over with insect buzzing noises panning crazily and the sound of burning bin-liners dripping into ice cold water.
3. As the fizzing bin liners play out a semi-regular beat, Kate starts to sing in Enochian, with lyrics apparently (my Enochian is rusty as hell) evoking two differemt kinds of Seraphin (one little, one large?)
4. Then the hand drums kick in; three slightly different sets, clipping off eahc other with the odd beat in nine echoplexed to all dimensions.
5. Behind the drums is a synth line made up of Otto Avery's breath... it sorta goes: Ahhhh uh uh Ahhhhhhh uhhhhh, Ahhhh uh uh Ahhhhhhh uhhhhh...
6.After a three minutes the drums fly off into the stereo extremities, oscillating as they go and the last uhhhhh morphs into a harp refrain, almost medieval but with synth pops and gurgles and un-named Machine Elf snatches of vocal mixed in.
7. More harps join, two, then three, then four, all playing the same basic refrain but once removed each time. The gurgls continue, threatening to overwhelm.
8. The descending cello from the A side comes in now, getting gradually louder and louder, competing Sister Ray style for attention with the harps and the Machine Elves.
9. Finally, we are left with just the odd echo of the harp and cello, now more an impression, a static hum, than a sound and the ever-changing humchatter of the Machine Elves which ever so slowly change in pitch and stretch out to form Kate Bush and Otto Avery having a conversation about Egyptian dogs.

The cover is all deep Red with Gold lettering and a single image, dead centre, of an albino male proudly staring into the camera while holding a stone-eye.