Hugh Featherstone - Announcer LP

Hugh's third album, a musical and technical quantum leap which spawned the single Late Night Hunger on sexy 7-inch heavy-duty blue vinyl. A collector's item, to be sure. A few copies are still to be found by trawling the web. Good luck.

The arrangements here are already becoming warmer and more richly textured, more mature and a stark contrast to the more "hollow"" or echoy sound on some previous Featherstone treatments. Don Stevenson's pencil work on the cover would have been enough for me to buy this colection of widely searching songs. A book by its cover, indeed.

Kansas Man, for example is a real revelation. What first sounds like a shambling sub-country & western number, could pass for a end-of-a-relationship lurvsong, turns out to be a piece of acoustic art. WHAT? Listen and try it. It may take a few listens, but it's well worth it.

Both Daylight and Betrayal, tight and harsh, prefigure Hugh's later prediliction for more rock-oriented realisations of his poetry.

Hugh wrote:

This was a big jump up in technology and musicianship. Recorded in Kurt Eggmanns new, larger studio on eight track tape with crack musicians and a well thought out production concept, cut by the latest Neumann helium-cooled lathe with computer graded variable wall thickness to avoid the problems of overprint so typical of the vinyl era, Announcer was actually quite state of the art. In fact it got an excellent review in Audio magazine with high scores for the songs, the musicianship, the recording quality and the quality of the very detailed sleeve information.

Several of these songs are still in my programme today. Neither is there anything that I would do very differently now. It was a privilege to work with musicians of class like Gerd Fellner (with whom I later made a super five-song "limited edition" project, the infamous "Yellow Tape", on which he played absolutely everything with gob-smacking virtuosity), wonder-funk bassist Charles Lewis, the Telecaster King Billy Huggins, Rick "the keys" Panzer and the very solid Caroline Duskin. Respect to all of them, wherever they are now.

Don again worked with me on the well thought-out graphic concept and all the time and effort we put in definitely shows. Even now it still looks and sounds fresh, fresh, fresh!

If any record company had taken a chance on me then, it would have been a sure thing for all concerned, of that I am certain. Every song on Announcer is a strong contender. But as fate would have it, despite good reviews and a small but enthusiastic following, I was destined to remain in the wilderness, a place I have since begun to regard as my own (in fact, I'm thinking of re-doing the wallpaper, that chintzy cactus stuff with the pink rocks is starting to get on my nerves).