The Weather Clock

Nature and culture website Caught by the River’s phonographic arm announces the release of its second long player.

‘The Weather Clock’ is a reissue of July Skies’ gorgeous British landscape LP from 2008. A lost guitar –led, harmonic-ambient gem, it’s less a hauntological delve into the British psyche and more a bleached out mid-summer’s daydream much like Felt’s Train Above The City – something akin to a transportational meditation on the British countryside soundtracked by Vini Reilly and viewed from a perfect horizontal hillside vantage point. This Rivertones release is the first time ‘The Weather Clock’ has been issued on vinyl.

July Skies is a West Midlands based recording project begun by Antony Harding in 1997. Since the release of The Weather Clock, July Skies has regrouped as a five-piece band and have been spending time recording the fifth LP ‘A Day In The Country’.

July Skies is: Orford Ness, lost youth, Henry Moore, pylons across fields, abandoned airfields, Avebury, endless childhood summers, forgotten England, the romance of the heavens well after closing time, Super8, countryside, mornings in May, ruins, faded innocence, post-war Britain, skies of all seasons, trudging coastlines, Festival of Britain 1951, memories made with a Polaroid Landcam 103, overgrown follies, East Anglia, concrete precincts and tower blocks, suburbia, old Ordnance Survey maps, lost airmen, rustic charm, John Nash, poppy day, a half remembered smile, 1960s artwork by Harry Wingfield, John Berry, Martin Aitchinson, C F Tunnicliffe, Ronald Lampitt, BST, municipal parks at dusk, love, infatuation and loss.

Rivertones is Caught by the River’s audio outlet – a record label that specializes in the sounds of the outdoors and the music inspired by it. Rivertones has previously released records by Chris Watson & Robert Macfarlane (the exclusive collaboration the Sea Road), Dubwood Allstars and The Time and Space Machine as well as a soundtrack to Melissa Harrison’s novel At Hawthorn Time. the first album release – Be One – is due in January. Future releases are lined up from Darren Hayman (“Thankful Villages”) with more to be announced in the coming months.