We've noticed that the new Occultation inserts which come free with initial copies of The Granite Shore's Flood of fortune 7" are proving extremely popular, indeed, scans of them are starting to appear on a number of websites. There a couple of variations but everyone who's ordered the 7" from us so far should've had at least one. In response to a number of enquiries, the insert was designed by Elena Milego and the photo on the front is taken from a 1947 copy of Penguin Music Magazine which has some wonderful information on the record-making process, much of it still relevant today. The back of the insert shows the Occultation catalogue to date, from The Wild Swans' English Electric Lightning 10" through to our next release, which will be The Distractions' Black Velvet EP. We do take enormous care over every aspect of our releases, and it's been very gratifying to find that so many people seem to appreciate this. Speaking of The Distractions, they were in the studio in Liverpool last week, at work on new recordings for us. The session was engineered by Richard Turvey of The Wild Swans, who also played piano and organ and featured founder Distractions Mike Finney (vocals) and Steve Perrin (guitar, vocals, tambourine), another former member Nick Garside (bass), Nick Halliwell of The Granite Shore (guitar, vocals) keeping up the Occultation connection, plus Stuart Mann (drums). We're absolutely thrilled to welcome The Distractions to Occultation and look forward to a number of releases by the most unjustly unheralded of Manchester groups. There will be the aforementioned Black Velvet digital EP to kick things off (that's currently being finalised, shouldn't be too much longer now), then an album entitled Nothing comprising their 1978 TJM 12" EP and 1979 Factory single plus the legendary 1995 recordings. Then there'll be a new single taken from the June 2010 Liverpool sessions - format to be determined.
