It’s a veritable Clash of the Titans of English Pop music… a musical meeting of minds to rival King Kong Vs. Godzilla but, sadly, with no Ishirō Honda to chronicle an event of such magnitude and, with both participants being English, the actual meeting was less the cause of earthquakes and tsunamis, more a case of…

…Tea and a chat, followed by some – typically for both – fine pop song writing, recording, mixing, a celebratory glass of wine and a trip to a restaurant for a curry and a pint of beer… all traditions as English in their longevity as the day they arrived on these shores from somewhere else…

“Right now I weigh more than Andy on account of the cheese. He feeds me cheese when I go round there, which is comforting. I only really get in fights with myself, which I always lose”- Robyn

“Rather than these two big planets and their similar odd gravities repulsing each other, as might be anticipated. I can cheerfully tell you that it’s been one rather beautiful crashing creative event. …that I want to repeat. Feels like being in a group again.” (no dinosaurs were harmed during the making of this EP). – Andy

“Andy and I are the same age and suffer from the same record collection, especially the B’s: Barrett, Beatles, Beefheart. He’s a Scorpio and I’m Pisces, so we’re the same astrological team as Richard Burton and Liz Taylor, except neither of us is Welsh, sadly.” – Robyn

English (and British popular music generally) has consistently proved capable of absorbing, refreshing, renewing and placing a distinctive twist on a melange of sounds and influences from almost anywhere in the world while managing to preserve, in many cases, a distinctly local, but not parochial, flavour.

“Robyn’s fierce inventiveness is a joy to work with. Like bathing in the sparks from some surreal angle grinder.” – Andy

“Andy is the only person that I can easily write songs with. They simply appear, as if we were at a seance. He’s perhaps more logical than me, but it’s not really a contest, is it? A lot of song-writing is solving a puzzle that you’ve set for yourself; I really enjoy going round to his place in Swindon and puzzling with him. I live just up the road, in Nashville…”

So, from two of the country’s finest songwriters, come the first recordings from their recent collaborations and while there are logistics to be overcome – Swindon to Nashville so a boxed set is probably some while away – the resulting EP represents a unique Anglo/American (at least in terms of geographical location of one of the participants) take on things. APEEP902 (10” vinyl)