SAY

Between late 2012 and early 2013, both Fisher brothers, Patrick and Oliver, relocated to independent lodgings in the predictable London borough of Hackney whilst Dan Reeves remained in the coastal enclave of Brighton & Hove, West Sussex. Sporadic melody-making sessions between Fisher, O and Reeves had already cemented the nucleus that would become The Hanging Valley by the time ‘live music fans’ hailing from the East of England were sent o’er the moon upon the announcement at a press conference at Leyton Orient’s Brisbane Road stadium that LAC (nee Lindsay Alexander Corstorphine) had joined the band in a full-time four-string capacity. Legend says his controversial initiation had taken the form of a gruelling 5 (five) day tour throughout some of the Benelux’s most scenic highways and byways.

During a long weekend in Barcelona in February 2014, the new quartet spent Valentine’s Day together and cycled along the seafront as far as the Nova Mar Bella before playing a passable show the following afternoon. The paparazzi hubbub covering the mini-break was soon to be eclipsed by the announcement that Reeves was to become a father for the first time. Fittingly, Dan was only ever one letter away from Dad, and so it proved, when, following the ‘locking down’ of each of The Hanging Valley’s nine precious numbers at Mark ‘Mug’ Jasper’s Sound Savers studio in predictable Homerton in early October 2014, Reeves abandoned the limelight in order to assist upon seeing young Elliot into the world. At his son’s launch event at Brighton’s Churchill Square shopping centre Reeves was heard to exclaim that his would be ‘a lifetime of experience, bleeding from the speakers’.