Album Notes

Belvedere Mountain Express consists of:

Howard Goodman – music composition, programming, production. Based in Edinburgh, Scotland, but lived in London, England while working on this CD

Until 2005, Vicki Giblin – vocals, words and melody composition. Was based in Cardiff, Wales at the time

Our second full-length CD, Through Sulph'rous Night, was released in January 2005, following the first, A Vow in the Blue Belltower, which came out in August 2003.

Many of the pieces on our CD, which are mostly around five or six minutes long, contain several rhapsodic changes, although the overall structure is coherent, with themes being introduced, developed and revisited. Synthetic and sampled sounds are used in equal measure, the samples coming from foreign-language radio stations and obscure filmes, with an emphasis on Eastern Europe. Some of the music could be described as ambient or ‘downtempo’, and percussion is used sparingly: mostly the sound sources and melodies create their own rhythms, without the need for drums. Having said all this, the vocal pieces (four out of the eleven tracks on this CD) are more ‘song’-like. We wouldn’t go as far as calling it ‘pop’, but they are certainly quite accessible, more so than the ‘experimental electronic’ category would suggest!

In any case, we believe Belvedere Mountain Express to have a truly original sound, since we are unable to think of any bands which sound like us. Influences could be as diverse as Godspeed You Black Emperor!, The Legendary Pink Dots, Steve Reich and This Mortal Coil, although we would never claim to sound like any of these. Listeners’ opinions are, therefore, very welcome.

Finally, the packaging of the CD showcases the industrial-themed printmaking and photography of the artist Katherine Sola, making it very pleasing visually, as well as, we hope, aurally.