My Autumn Empire The Village Compass. Epic45 have just released their masterwork. This is one of Epic45. Which half? Unknown. The one most influenced by Antony Harding. Possibly My Autumn Empire sits behind willow trees on the edge of the July Skies estate and swoops down on dusk born drafts and steals the scraps of discarded briefs of July Skies poignancy and earnestness that waft through windows and crevices and airspaces. First track should have been born as a July Skies track, it is rarefied pastoral nostalgia inducing loveliness. The music is scenery, it is coaxed from the rocks and trees and the mycelium that acts as conduit to the exhalations of rural England and transmit it across hilly fields and tendrils of common heritage. If july Skies is Fokine then My Autumn Empire is Fokine, oh wait...which is Massine? Hood? But they are in Leeds, they mine the same collective vein of homey reminiscence but with a determinedly more futurist outlook. Brave Timbers as Nijinska? My reading habits are transparent attempts to improve my random reference ability. I've been watching ballet videos on youtube to more greatly understand my own references. The Rite of Spring is amazing, truly. Watch, become and archaeologist just the same as My Autumn Empire and July Skies, trawl the countryside in abandoned RAF sites and discover fragments of the jawbones of Gerry's blown to bits by Spitfires and Hurricanes and mount it on an obsidian plaque and lean it on a mantelpiece in a place of honour. Anglicized. Next to photographs of Antoine Langulet and the consumption of the dead, like nostalgia more powerful than the present. Second track, this one has vocals, still nostalgic and warm. I made a mix cd for a stranger recently. I made two actually. Neither contained a song from My Autumn Empire though they are certainly deserving of a place of respect on any even middling mix cd. I did include a short July Skies track. Ethel Wingfield was a hero to My Autumn Empire, surely, and by connection and inheritance Thomas the Tank Engine and Optimus Prime. This track is a repeating soft acoustic motif, double tracked whispers, tenderness verging on subtleness. So entirely lovely. If people were as lovely as this track we'd all be much happier. We'd be duller. The looters prowling the London fashion scene would instead be armed with miner's lamps and a forensic sifter and possibly tube socks pulled to their knees over Timberland footwear. They'd be nose deep into the earth, sifting the past for flint blades impaled in skull bones from the 14th century looking for the next Towton. Giggling to each other when the new issue of Archaeology on Parade arrived and the next Leakey centerfold passed in secret among the mirthful assembly. Next track, more pace, acoustic guitars, it is autumnal, it is also spring-like, it is also wintry. It is not summery. Those are profound statements. I am aware, I have my application for the Nevsky Pickwickians on the windowsill. After turning down the Algonquins, of course, St Petersburg in the fall, with My Autumn Empire and Putin shirtless hanging over the toilet. This is incidental, it's a feeling, a jubilant mood springing from good news, perhaps a new postcard with contains another photo of a test pattern from BBC circa 1966 when over the air broadcasting ended at 8PM. Next track, Woodland Theme, Wood Alcohol. Our softball season ended this evening and a retrospective video of our season would require melancholy tones and maudlin sentiments. We finished 1-11. I was the coach. He sings on this track. I would not imagine that he is a fine athlete. I see the members of Epic45 as civil servants, toiling quietly in a field office in the Midlands, sneaking off early on Friday afternoons to watch Fawlty Towers and then to count the paving stones between the pub and the spot where the descendant of Forkbeard once purchased of the Sunday issue of the Daily Mail. Profound. Next track, more ringing acoustics, nicely recorded, backwards masking, a mellifluous mix and random loveliness. The effect is like a rainstorm in an empty parking lot paved with pea gravel and leafy spurge. BBC Telford, a recreation of a television call letter ring? Is this nostalgia to children of England? is this history? Piano Magic used to make academic papers disguised as pop records but they wrote dreadful songs and used thrilling titles like Artist Rifles. Better than the International Brigade. British history seems so much more sensible than nearly every other European country. I was listening to very intelligent people discuss the French Revolution and they discussed the Tennis Court Oath and the death of Danton and the lifting of the state censorship just prior to Estates-General which made late 18th century France seem much like mid 17th Century England, and yet Cromwell turned down an invitation to become King, granted after murdering very many Irish and sawing off charles I's head. But would Robespierre have done the same? Marat? Of course not. The latin mind. It is not chronicled in these songs. These are decidedly english songs by a decidedly english man. They are soft and sweet and beautiful and I like it very much. if they were anthropology buffs and if they did truly become agitated to the point of sheer overexcitement when they were invited to the reenactment of the Battle of Prestonpans I would be delighted because while I would never lose my soul to the daily grind of a war reenactment regiment I would like to have friends that indulged in such deliciously odd endeavours in their free time. When they are not at work in the meteorology office looking through single paned windows to weathervanes installed by the first clique from the Royal Society, erected when they were not out surreptitiously collecting urine in order to obtain a purer sample of Phosphorous. Merry and lovely, an instrumental. I love the word lovely. I use it in public and it diminishes my esteem among my more masculine colleagues. It is a cross that I bear, especially now, when my hair is so very short and I feel compelled to sing The Sound of Arrows pop songs near my work desk. Branch Lines in the Snow. Did this serve as a template to the new Epic45 album? That album is amazing, truly, this not as much but it is still remarkably warm and inviting. The Eggman to their Boo Radleys. Martin Carr is dead to me now. The Gatelings. Where the Boo Radleys used to pretend that they were disembarking at the jetway in Heathrow to rapturous throngs I suppose Epic45 dreamed instead of travel by train, in antique carriages, the sort similar to those described in ghastly passages from La Bete Humaine. And the very muscular women. Flutes, lithe, graceful, a dream. The denouement has begun, a slow descent into the parts that we are all assembled from, the ether, the star dust, the assorted detritus from 4.5 billion years. Last track, finger exercises. have they visited Hull? Have they communed with Salako, installed a table in chairs on a secluded beach and netwroked via ouija board to the saints of all sovereign nostalgists. This is not modern. It is not exciting. It is just very pretty and well deserving of your time. Take it home, cuddle its grooves and feel yourself forcibly inhabited by the harmony of the spheres. Thom Yorke writes music this inconsequential and he is proclaimed a genius. He is not. My Autumn Empire is not a genius but instead of playing at the populist carnival barker they live the life of a true collectivist, poor but principled, daring but not innovative, as self interested as anyone else at the fair. Lovely electric guitar mimicking the atmosphere of a rainshower at dusk, mimicking of anything else you might hold dear to your heart and with birdsong and many other beautiful things.