Dusty Stray / Flake Brown - Winter's Day / Cool is the Snow

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4...according to our Business Lady on Thu 18 Feb, 2010.

Bit of a delay on this winter edition, not surprisingly due to the bad weather. Anyway, the winter edition features a rather disturbing song entitled 'Winter's Day' which tells of a man lost in woodland wilderness whose body is ravaged by the fierce winter conditions and is eventually devoured by the local wildlife. It's harrowing lyrical content is offset by it's strangely upbeat folksy delivery courtesy of Jonathan Brown, aka Dusty Stray. The other side features the lyrical cheekiness of Brighton's lightning fingered Flake Brown who wows with his incredible guitar skill, his Ivor Cutler-esque garbled vocal delivery and his tale of the furious snow blurring the edges of the british isles...nice to be reminded of the lovely weather eh....

Due to the severe weather conditions most of the UK faced this winter(well, if the rail service can get away with it, so can we) the release of our third and penultimate Seasonal Seven has been a little late in showing itself. Now ready though and pressed onto white vinyl as crisp as fresh snow, we want you to look back and celebrate the season that was our most snow filled for quite some time with these two ever so wintery tracks.
Side A is home to ‘Winter’s Day’, a track taken from the album ‘Tales of Misfortune and Woe’ (released on Basta Records in 2009) by American and now Netherlands resident, Jonathan Brown, aka Dusty Stray. On ‘Winter’s Day’ we hear the story, sung in Jonathan’s rich vocals with accompaniment from Marjolein van der Klauw, of a man becoming lost in the frozen wilderness, succumbing to the cold, dying and being ‘given up to eat’ to the local wildlife. What is winter but a time of giving up and sharing?! A seemingly sad and disturbing tale, yet with the additional acoustic guitar, banjo and percussion, the track is nowhere near a depressing dirge but a toe-tapping (slightly sinister) and lightly comedic ode to the harshness of winter.

The double A side is a track played by the spider like fingers of Brighton’s surreal troubadour Flake Brown (Tony Ramsay). ‘Cool is the Snow’ is taken from Flake’s unique and fascinating debut album ‘Help the Overdog’ which we had the delight in releasing in the summer 2008. ‘Cool is the Snow’ is a flurry, nay a snow storm, of whirling finger picked guitar and lyrical/vocal wizardry; Flake’s distinctive style being compared between the likes of Jake Thackray, Robin Williamson and Ivor Cutler.

Released on virgin snow white 7" vinyl and limited to 300 pressings. Make sure to get your copy to add to the other two seasons before the last release in the collection comes out this spring!

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