Bath, Somerset, UK
November 2022

Buildings People Money was written between 2017 and 2020. We spent many nights and days working on these songs at various spaces throughout the West Country and at our home studios in Bath. We played all of these songs live throughout those years – they were constantly evolving and with each new change we felt the songs were growing stronger and becoming their best versions of themselves... It was a lengthy process but one that saw us at our most focused as a unit.

Through an invitation to play a private party we came across the barn in south Wiltshire where the album was recorded. It was being used as the green room for the artists performing on the day. Within a few moments of stepping in and seeing the oak floor, cladded apex roof, views across the valley we knew there was something special about the place. After the show we asked the owner about hiring the barn and our new band-home was ours. We spent several weeks demo recording and pre-producing there in July and November 2019. These were significant sessions in the making of the record where we got to learn the room's character, try out different recording techniques and get down to the work of arranging songs whose origins lay in one-off moments of improvised other-worldliness… The atmosphere and seclusion of the barn's location aided the creative process... we had no distractions, it was a dream setting.

In January & February 2020, we played nine shows before heading back to the barn late February for two weeks to record Buildings People Money. It was the most enjoyable album recording session we'd experienced – the time invested into the pre-production and us road-testing all the songs meant they were recorded quickly, live and with an assured energy. The version of Dust on the album is the very first take, captured before midday, when the morning caffeine was still doing its work… We went on to record twenty-seven more versions of the song before agreeing the first take had the magic and we wouldn't better it. The drum sound at the end of Mystery Ride was created by playing the pre-recorded drums back through a monitor speaker very loudly against the owner's house to create a slap-back delay that was then re-recorded with ambient mics outside at varying distances between the two buildings. Our longtime collaborator and recording engineer Dominic Bailey-Clay at the helm, pushing the creative ideas to new levels, buzzing with his monstrous new Cadac mixing console that he'd just bought before the session. A week into the session we were joined by the incredible talent of dbh – the only guest musician on the record who brought a whole new depth and richness with his violin parts. It was a happy time. During the session we had read the first reports of Covid-19... we shrugged it off as just a bad cold we probably wouldn't get... little did we know.

Mixing sessions soon ground to a halt as the country went into lockdown. We watched our summer schedule of shows and festivals disappear and soon our financial income to complete the album had evaporated altogether. Then our brother and musical comrade of thirteen years, drummer Cerys Brocklehurst, expressed his wish to step-down from the band. We were saddened at his departure but fully understood and with only love supported his move.

Lockdown revealed a lot for us – it changed all of our creative outlooks as individuals and spawned new worlds of music for us all... Though Buildings People Money was still there, unfinished, with a lot of work to be done, with many thousands already spent and not a penny left in the band kitty to pay for its completion.

We begrudgingly started our Indie GoGo crowdfund campaign. Prior to lockdown we had always been a little judgemental of these styles of campaigns. We took pride in our gigging network that had always generated the income to finish an album or help fund new instruments and recording equipment, however, the campaign went very well. We were humbled and surprised by the level of support and generosity our fans showed us.

With enough funds to pay for the mixing and mastering of the album we picked up the project in early 2021. With Joel Magill appointed as the mixing engineer we headed to Wicker Studios in London where Kate Bush recorded her seminal masterpiece Hounds of Love. We first met Joel when he was touring with a special band very close to our collective musical heart, Syd Arthur. We played a very memorable show together in Bath in 2018 and remained close friends from that point on... Joel brought a new world of ideas to the album outside of our West Country nucleus and we were very happy with his input and where he took the overall sound and shape of the record.

In April 2021, we headed to Taunton to the legendary LOUD Mastering studio where Jason Mitchell made the final master cut of the record. It was a monumental day – the album's musical production was finally complete. With the kitty back at zero, we had to generate more funds to complete the manufacturing. That took some time, a lot longer than we had hoped but we finally got there.

Sincere gratitude to those fans who supported the Indie GoGo campaign – we could not have finished it without you. Thank you to everyone who has backed us over the years, especially the many promoters who have booked us to play shows. We're not done yet, this is not the end or a goodbye from the band, more a farewell and bon voyage to these songs, this album and the time that surrounded them. These songs are yours now and we hope you enjoy Buildings People Money as much as we did writing and recording it.

With love,
PE

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Port Erin would like to say a very special thank you to these people for their direct help in the making of Buildings People Money – Stuart & Cara Cowen, Dominic Bailey-Clay, Joel Magill, dbh, Miles Glendinning, Jason Mitchell, Alan Myles Tyghe and Matt Robertson. We would also like to thank our families, partners, children and friends for their support of our creative endeavors.

A very special thank you to each and every person who supported our Indie GoGo campaign, especially – Christian Reno, Andy Seager, Brian May, Phil Tanner, Justin Smith, Isaac Phillips, Tom Reynolds, Nigel Norman, Wesley Christenson, Pierre Shepard, Phil Moakes, Tim Franks, Graeme M Mair, Mel Austin, Dan Jupp, Paula Cuccurullo, Phil Turner, Chris Moxon, Ian Lloyd, Steve Taylor and the kind folk of North Leigh.