''Far Skies Deep Time'' is the first official studio EP by the English

progressive rock Progressive rock (shortened as prog rock or simply prog; sometimes conflated with art rock) is a broad genre of rock music that developed in the United Kingdom and United States through the mid- to late 1960s, peaking in the early 1970s. In ...

band

Big Big Train Big Big Train are an English progressive rock band formed in Bournemouth in 1990. The current line-up includes band founder Gregory Spawton (bass, guitars and keyboards), along with Nick D'Virgilio (drums, guitars and keyboards) and Rikard Sj ...

. It was released in 2010 by English Electric Recordings, and re-released in 2011 with "Kingmaker" replacing "Master of Time" as the first track. It contains five tracks, including a 17-minute epic about the last voyage of Belgian singer Jacques Brel.

Track listing

#"Master of Time" (

Anthony Phillips Anthony Edwin Phillips (born 23 December 1951) is an English musician, songwriter, producer and singer who gained prominence as the original lead guitarist of the rock band Genesis, from 1967 to 1970. He left in July 1970 and learned to play m ...

) - 7:44 / "Kingmaker" (Greg Spawton) - 10:31 * #"Fat Billy Shouts Mine" (Spawton) - 6:34 #"British Racing Green" (

David Longdon David Longdon (17 June 1965 – 20 November 2021) was a British multi-instrumentalist and singer, who was best known as the lead vocalist and co-songwriter of the progressive rock band Big Big Train. Besides singing, Longdon played flute, keyb ...

/Spawton) - 3:59 #"Brambling" (Longdon/Spawton) - 5:00 #"The Wide Open Sea" (Longdon/Spawton) - 17:44 * The original version of the EP features "Master of Time", a cover of an

song demoed for the 1977 album '' The Geese and the Ghost''. The import and download version features "Kingmaker" as an alternative track to "Master of Time".

Personnel

– lead vocals, flute, accordion, mandolin, banjo,

vibraphone The vibraphone is a percussion instrument in the metallophone family. It consists of tuned metal bars and is typically played by using mallets to strike the bars. A person who plays the vibraphone is called a ''vibraphonist,'' ''vibraharpist ...

, keyboards, glockenspiel,

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Ex ...

theremin The theremin (; originally known as the ætherphone/etherphone, thereminophone or termenvox/thereminvox) is an electronic musical instrument controlled without physical contact by the performer (who is known as a thereminist). It is named afte ...

* Dave Gregory – 6- and

12-string A twelve-string guitar (or 12-string guitar) is a steel-string guitar with 12 strings in six courses, which produces a thicker, more ringing tone than a standard six-string guitar. Typically, the strings of the lower four courses are tuned in o ...

electric guitar An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gu ...

e-bow The EBow, short for electronic bow or energy bow, is an electronic device used for playing string instruments, most often the electric guitar. It is manufactured by Heet Sound Products, of Los Angeles, California. It was invented by Greg Heet i ...

*Gregory Spawton – keyboards, 6- and 12-string electric and acoustic guitars,

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

*Andy Poole – bass guitar,

bass pedals Bass pedals are an electronic musical instrument with a foot-operated pedal keyboard with a range of one or more octaves. The earliest bass pedals from the 1970s consisted of a pedalboard and analog synthesizer tone generation circuitry packag ...

, keyboards *

Nick D'Virgilio Nicholas D'Virgilio (born November 12, 1968), often referred to as NDV, is an American drummer, singer and guitarist, best known as a member of the progressive rock band Spock's Beard. He was also one of two drummers chosen to replace Phil Col ...

– drums,

backing vocals A backing vocalist is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists. A backing vocalist may also sing alone as a lead-in to the main vocalist's entry or to sing a counter-melody. Backing vocalists are ...

;Guest musicians *Jonathan Barry – guitar solo (2) *Danny Manners – double bass (3) *Tony Müller – piano (3) * Martin Orford – keyboard solos (2) *Jim Trainer – artwork, seagulls *Rob Aubrey – mixing and mastering at Aubitt Studios

External links

*Liner note

References

Big Big Train albums 2010 EPs {{EP-stub