2 x 12″ release on 180 gram heavyweight Vinyl plus 20 page lyric booklet.

Paul Buchanan, mainstay of Glaswegian soulful pop perfectionists The Blue Nile, releases his debut solo album ‘Mid Air’ on May 21st ’12 on Newsroom Records via Essential. ‘Mid Air’ was recorded at home in Glasgow, at a friend’s house on the East Coast of Scotland, and at Gorbals Sound, a state of the art studio that’s bringing new life to a part of Glasgow traditionally thought less than salubrious. The Blue Nile’s Robert Bell dropped by to offer a few thoughts as the work neared completion (“I wouldn’t dream of putting something out without playing it to him”), but Buchanan is the only musician on the record.

‘Mid Air’ is an extraordinarily intimate record, its spare piano and vocal-based arrangements unfurling at a meditative pace. Thirteen of its fourteen tracks are less than three minutes long, but rest assured all life is here. Buchanan’s beautifully bruised voice remains a faithful conduit of all things emotive, and ‘Mid Air’ was written from a place of humility and wee-small-hours contemplation.

Says Paul: “I think if I’d tried to make a record that sounds like the band I’d be quite nervous, but this is more of a record-ette. It’s quite small in stature and the songs are very brief, but don’t get me wrong – it kept me awake at night.”

Buchanan also concedes that, in some ways, he is “continually re-writing the same song”, chipping away at the themes that have absorbed him from day one. ‘Far above the chimney tops / Take me where the bus don’t stop” he sings here on My True Country. Naturally, such starry-eyed sentiments will chime with fans of the Blue Nile’s charmed 1983 debut, A Walk Across The Rooftops. At root, these beautifully smudged miniatures represent a still more potent distillation of all that has made Buchanan’s past work so special. ‘Mid Air’ – his little “record-ette” as he calls it – is wonderfully big of heart.