Album Notes

IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR AN ALBUM PACKED WITH TEXTURE, COLOUR AND GREAT TUNES, LOOK NO FURTHER!

Often likened to The Beatles, The Kinks, The Small Faces and The Who, 'A Lincolnshire Echo' is nonetheless a work like no other.

“I don't believe in filler,” says its creator, Adam S. Leslie. “I've put an equal amount of care and attention into each of these tracks. If I'm to expect real people to pay their hard-earned cash for my product, then it's my duty to make sure it's worth having, that every moment on this record is worth listening to... not once, but time and again. I wanted to create something that people can hold in their hand and treasure for years to come, and I believe I've achieved that.”

Packed with hooks, the songs will lodge in your brain – you'll be humming them for weeks!



The album is psychedelic without being corny, retro without being dated, modern without sounding like everyone else, experimental yet accessible. The music is drawn from the heart of the rural English dreamscape – neither folk nor country, but instead a kaleidoscope of influences: hymns, sea shanties, the strange melodies of dreams, rock'n'roll, surrealist thought, pop music in its purest form... anything that has ever made an impression on their creator, a sticky soup of music just waiting to get out.

A Lincolnshire Echo is a bittersweet love-letter to the remote hamlets and villages which comprised Adam's childhood. Each song an anthem to a place in Lincolnshire – a daydream, a folly, sometimes a black joke or a sneer or a nightmare dressed as a lullaby. The album is a 14-track journey, from the snaking backwards guitars at the beginning of Twenty to the cascading church-bell guitars at the fade of Little London.


TWENTY
A five-minute television jingle advertising Twenty Cream Soda, a drink which inspired optimism, compassion and deep nagging doubts. Available only in the village of Twenty for three days during the summer of 1983, the sugary liquid came in sun-faded blue cans that were always a little too far away to hold and a little too close to ever see properly.

DEEPING GATE
A farewell from Lincolnshire to the people of Deeping Gate, the village soon drifted away for its new life in a new county. Released as a single in the woods around Deeping Gate, the record was pressed into the bark of trees and could only be listened to by microbes. If you ever hear a scarecrow in Lincolnshire humming to itself in the dead of night, it will be humming Deeping Gate.

NEW YORK
This is the actual song sung by highwayman John Nevison as he hung from the gallows in York in 1684, as he both recalled fond memories of his time in Lincolnshire, and anticipated the magnificent Chrysler Building several hundred years early. Actually, this may well be the only song in existence about which it can be said, “no, a different New York”.

TETNEY LOCK
A punk song much beloved by Victorian teenagers, it was especially popular with rebellious young clerical apprentices in Lincoln.

GIBRALTAR
The favourite song of Lincolnshire's first astronaut, Elizabeth Locke, who first took to the air in 1741. This song was also briefly adopted for the national anthem during the spring of 1801, and was most famously played after Sir Charles De Lacey's dramatic win at the 1801 Italian Grand Prix.

DOGDYKE
A sea shanty written by ghosts, the notation for this song was actually discovered scrawled on the wall of a haunted chapel in Fosdyke in 1967, but soon became attached to the nearby village of Dogdyke, perfectly describing as it does the geography of Dogdyke's unusual roadways. The song is performed exactly as written, including the unusual (yet subtle) changes in rhythm throughout.

MAVIS ENDERBY
This was King Charles II's favourite song with the title Mavis Enderby – but little did the doomed monarch know the lyrics are actually a Pagan incantation (though have been altered for this recording to prevent supernatural activity in the homes of those listening to the CD). On top of this, the guitar solo at the end perfectly describes the chemical formula for the limestone found predominantly around the village of Mavis Enderby. The drummer was taken to the vets and destroyed immediately after this recording.

SWALLOW
The village of Swallow is so named because of the alarming regularity with which its hapless residents are sucked underground by its marshy soil. This song is written as a lament to all those lost souls.

LONG BENNINGTON
This is a song from the future, about which nothing is yet known.

CAYTHORPE
Whenever you have a song in your head and you can't put your finger on where you've heard it before – this is it! For the first time ever on CD, here is the song in the back of your mind, the one you hear in dreams; this is the musical equivalent of deja vu or those meaningless nagging doubts that plague you as you fall asleep.

HILL DYKE
This is a 17th Century hymn originally written by Pastor Robert Drake, and presented here in its most authentic form. Robert Drake later became famous as the inventor of ice.

WHITE PIT
The lyrics of this song mean something different to everyone who hears them – and by an amazing coincidence, also make perfect sense to Russian speakers.

HOUGH-ON-THE-HILL
This song was written using the mathematics of nature. Bizarrely, there are actually two Houghs: Hough-On-The-Hill (the subject of this song) and its identical twin Hough On The Hill. They are impossible to tell apart, and travelers are often found wandering hopelessly confused. Even locals are unsure which of the two they live in, or whether it really makes any difference. The guitar solo at the end of this song was played by a trained bonobo chimp called Charlie.

LITTLE LONDON
Little London is identical in every way to the real London, only smaller and more rural. It has secretly been the capital of Lincolnshire since the 1950s. It was also the home of Sir Isaac Newton for 45 minutes while he ate some pie.