We are finally releasing a piece of art which is very close to my heart. I want to start by tagging my SITC brothers Andy Taylor and Dan Noble who I just wouldn’t be the same person without. The band is one of the best things in my life - thanks for sharing it with me. This is also for two of my closest friends who I slowly lost touch with after the band split in half in 2013, James Partridge and Simon Rose-Ward. One of the main reasons I finished this was to be a cool surprise for you all (as well as some closure as the whole project felt unfinished) and with hope that we all might get properly back in touch again. I was setting this up before the pandemic so it’s surreal that so much has changed in the short amount of time since this little project started and that we are living in a time when many people are working on reconnecting with people they have lost contact with and rebuilding bridges - that was always the plan with this - I hope you like it.

The first EP SITC released was ‘Warning Shots’ but it was not the first EP we recorded. Now, finally, the missing piece of our puzzle is complete and I am proud to give you ‘Arrival’. This was supposed to be the first thing everyone heard, our statement of intent, but we never released it because it didn’t come out the way we hoped.

On 1st November 2009 we went into Ebb Tone Studio with our very talented friend, Tom Henthorn, and spent all the money we had recording four songs (and one reprise). We couldn’t afford much time so I recorded all of my bass tracks and vocals in my bedroom and we recorded all of the music (other than the drums) for Promise and its reprise there too. In the January and February of 2010, Tom had the unenviable task of mixing the songs (which included many parts which had been recorded without him) with me next to him, chipping in about how I wanted it to sound. He did a fantastic job but because of a timing issue with one song, we decided to just release the best sounding recording, ‘Escape’, as a single and decide what to do with the rest of the songs later.

Later never came. Soon after releasing Escape, we played a Battle Of The Bands competition at Corporation and the amazing Graeme Atkinson asked us to record with him. We were so excited that we jumped straight in the studio with him and recorded Warning Shots. I tried to let go of the songs we recorded with Tom but up until today, they were always at the back of my mind.

The timing issue was that there was a mix up with the beats per minute we had written down so the drums were too slow on one of our favourite songs, ‘Remember To Forget’. We didn’t have enough money to record them again so we hoped that maybe once the song was finished, it might sound okay. It didn’t. A song which was a contender to be released as our debut single was pushed aside, never to see the light of day, and Escape became the song that people know us for and has been played at every single one of our gigs. It’s strange the way things work out.

Back then, speeding up a song was tricky. Most people thought it couldn’t be done without altering a song’s pitch etc. I tried it and it sounded okay but the bridge didn’t sound quite right and I could only save it with a low bit rate. It kept niggling at me until I was organising a gig to celebrate ten years since our first show, realised it was nearly ten years since recording our first set of songs and had the idea to revisit them.

I got in touch with Tom and after a lot of of digging around in his house, he found the DVDs with the tracks on and confirmed that changing the speed of songs was much simpler now. I was over the moon! Everything was there, from the drums, to vocals, to midi tracks I’d programmed and it was then that I decided I wanted to remix all of the songs, not just Remember To Forget. The other thing that bothered us about the recordings was my vocals. At the time, I had never been the lead singer in a band, I had always shared the role and I did not have much confidence in my voice. A friend had convinced me that double tracking all of my vocals (essentially singing everything as close to exactly the same as you can, twice, and having them both playing in the song) would make my voice sound better and mask any imperfections. I hated the way it sounded (muddy) and so did the rest of the band. Despite this, the double tracked vocals stayed - I wanted to keep it that way because I was so invested in what my friend had said, and the rest of the guys thought it made me happy.

Fast forward ten years and I could finally right the wrong! Tom (someone else I’ve relished getting to spend more time with again) worked his magic and for the first time, I heard Remember To Forget playing at the right speed with only one of me singing on it and I was so happy! Everything sounded so crisp, like we had recorded them last week. We spent a lot of time listening to each song and making them sound as good as they could. I am really happy with how they came out and finally ready for them to be heard - I hope you like them too!

Even though this is the first time the songs are being released, we thought it would be fun to make Arrival a Ten Year Anniversary Release so we have included three more songs:

Cut The Strings - the first song I ever wrote for the band and the first ever Safe In The Crossfire recording, with Andy on guitar and me on everything else - things were a lot rougher back then!

Remember To Forget and Safety recorded live at our first ever gig in August 2009 - thank you Simon Ramin for giving us that opportunity.

If anyone is interested where the name Arrival comes from or the concept for the artwork, please get in touch and I’d be happy to explain - I just thought this essay shouldn’t be any longer!

P.S. Just to clarify - Arrival is the same recording as ten years ago - we have not had the boyband treatment - we have not been through a turd polishing machine which smooths out any mistakes and nothing has been rerecorded. The differences between what you are hearing and what we had ten years ago are simple:

Remember To Forget has been sped up slightly so that it is the speed we used to play it live and the speed we originally intended to record it.

Where there used to be two recordings of me singing playing on each song, there is now only one - one of the original takes recorded in my room at my parents’ house.

All the songs have been remixed and remastered by Tom and I.

Thanks for your interest,

Nick