David Longdon ‘Door One’ The Posthumous Solo Album By The Late Vocalist Of Big Big Train.

DAVID LONGDON 'DOOR ONE'
THE POSTHUMOUS SOLO ALBUM FROM THE LATE VOCALIST OF BIG BIG TRAIN 

LIMITED EDITION WHITE VINYL, BLACK VINYL, CD AND DIGITAL FORMATS RELEASED 14th OCTOBER 2022

AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW https://burningshed.com/store/english-electric-recordings


Door One, David Longdon’s posthumous solo album, will be released on 14th October 2022 on CD via Big Big Train’s label English Electric Recordings and white and black vinyl editions via their vinyl partner Plane Groovy. The album will also be available on all digital streaming platforms. 

David had been accumulating musical and lyrical ideas for Door One over the past few years. He had been recording since April 2021, following the completion of Big Big Train’s Common Ground album. On the night of David’s tragic accident, which resulted in his untimely death on 20th November 2021, he had just returned home to Nottingham from a recording session at Playpen Studios in Bristol with his co-producer and engineer Patrick Phillips.

At the time of David’s death, the album was 90% finished. However, David’s partner Sarah, his manager Nick Shilton, Big Big Train founder Gregory Spawton and all the key protagonists involved in its creation agreed that David would want the world to hear the album. 

The challenging task of doing the final recording and mixing the record fell to David Patrick Phillips. “I met David through working at Real World studios, and we ended up really getting on. Finishing the album was a balancing act of me trying to honour what we had been talking about, but without his ears to say ‘Yes, I like that’ or not. I don't ever think that there can be an absolute truth in music, it’s the people that are involved in the process at that moment, making choices. David was a massively creative force of nature when it came to music, and I hope that he would have been happy with the choices that we made.”

David released his first solo album, Wild River, back in 2004 but on joining Big Big Train, the band became his primary focus. However, by the Spring of last year, he was seeking to forge a solo career in parallel with continuing to be a leading force within Big Big Train.

Door One, borrowing the nickname for a recreation ground in Nottingham near where David grew up, has a musical personality that is distinct from his work within Big Big Train, even though Gregory Spawton plays acoustic guitar on two songs. Gregory Spawton: "David was aware of my passion for 12-string guitar and said he had a song called Love Is All which he wanted me to play on. I recorded my parts for the song a few days after David died. Although he was gone, it felt like it was one last precious moment of making music together." 

The album’s eight songs are highly personal and follow a lyrical journey from darkness to enlightenment, from the intense and raw first single ‘Watch It Burn’, channelling David’s love of The Who, to the folk inflected ‘There’s No Ghost Like An Old Ghost’, which recalls David’s Dyble Longdon album with the late Fairport Convention singer Judy Dyble, and ‘Love Is All’, the gorgeous ballad which closes the album.

Door One was recorded with a core of four musicians: drummer Jeremy Stacey (King Crimson, Eric Clapton, Noel Gallagher, Sheryl Crow, The Finn Brothers), bassist Steve Vantsis (best known for his work with Fish), saxophonist Theo Travis (Steven Wilson, Soft Machine, Gong) and David’s longstanding friend and former 1990s Gifthorse band mate Gary Bromham (Bjork, Sheryl Crow, George Michael) who contributed guitar, backing vocals, keyboard parts and textures.

Gary Bromham: “Having worked with David on and off for over 35 years, we talked extensively about the influences for the album. He was very interested in the sonic textures created by David Bowie and Brian Eno in his Berlin Trilogy of albums. The atmospheres and use of ambience were a huge source of inspiration and a big factor in the making of Door One. My brief was to add what David termed ‘aural dimensions’ to the album. He said, ‘You know the brief.’ I subsequently had to take on a wider role with David’s passing, but Patrick Phillips and I were definitely on the same wavelength when it came to manifesting some of this at the mixing stage, with these goals in mind.”

The album’s stunning artwork is by Sarah Louise Ewing, with graphic design by Steve Vantsis. Sarah’s cover portrait of David is from a photograph by Sophocles Alexiou. 

In The Times, Dominic Maxwell said of David “Having taken a long time to get where he wanted to be, Longdon tried not to waste his precious time.” Door One is a testament to a very special artist whose creativity was continuing to flourish.

DAVID LONGDON ‘DOOR ONE’ LP
Side One
Into The Icehouse
Watch It Burn
There’s No Ghost Like An Old Ghost
The Singer And The Song

Side Two
Forgive (But Not Forget)
Sangfroid
The Letting Go
Love Is All

‘DOOR ONE’ CD
Into The Icehouse
Watch It Burn
There’s No Ghost Like An Old Ghost
The Singer And The Song
Forgive (But Not Forget)
Sangfroid
The Letting Go
Love Is All

DAVID LONGDON‘DOOR ONE’
RELEASED 14th OCTOBER 2022

AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW https://burningshed.com/store/english-electric-recordings
FOR MORE INFORMATION
www.bigbigtrain.com/door-one/