Bunyan, Vashti

Bunyan, Vashti

Heartleap

Dicristina Stair Builders

Nine years after ‘Lookaftering’, her last album of new material, legendary British singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyan returns with a breathtaking new LP. Recorded largely in her home studio, ‘Heartleap’ is a unique and entrancing collection of ten songs forming what Vashti is adamant will be her final album. Vashti’s third album follows her rediscovery - after thirty years in the wilderness - with the 2000 re-release of ‘Just Another Diamond Day’ (a bona fide cult classic that made # 53 in the Observer Music monthly’s ‘top 100 British albums of all time’), and the critical success of 2005’s ‘Lookaftering’. With ‘Heartleap’ she has delivered an album with a classic sound, where – for the first time – she herself has been in control of the whole process, from writing and arranging to playing and recording. Working predominantly from a studio set up in her Edinburgh home, the record was slowly pieced together, and reveals an artist at her peak, capturing her songs within fluid settings that masterfully marry content and form. Both ‘JADD’  and ‘Lookaftering’ saw Vashti‘s songs arranged and framed by others. Joe Boyd’s production and Robert Kirby’s arranging of the former remain timelessly classy, whilst Max Richter’s elegantly beautiful production of Lookaftering was enhanced by contributions from a raft of supporting artists - all eagerly adding their colours. Vashti is justly proud of ‘Lookaftering’, but ‘Heartleap’ is a more personal record, standing solely on the merits and patient endeavour of its author rather than being buoyed by and filtered...

Bunyan, Vashti

Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind

Dicristina Stair Builders

Following the amazing success story of Vashti Bunyan’s recent re-emergence as an artist after an exile of over 30 years, comes the release of ‘Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind’, a comprehensive compilation of early recordings dating from the period prior to Vashti’s classic ‘Just another Diamond Day’ album which was originally released1970.  Titled after Vashti’s (Jagger/Richards-penned) debut single which opens the compilation, this double-album represents an attempt to both open out and draw a line under the past, and also to try to set the record straight about the disparity between how Vashti viewed (and still views) herself against the way she has been popularly perceived. Widely construed as a folk singer - a tag she fundamentally disagrees with - these recordings instead reveal Vashti as a pop singer, however ‘fragile’ and unique.  As Vashti explains in her liner notes to the album, “I have heard it said that Andrew Oldham took this fragile little folk-singer and tried to make her into a pop-singer against her will. No he didn’t. Too fragile for his world I might have been, but that was no fault of his… I wanted to bring simple acoustic music into mainstream pop”.  Before she dropped out and set off on that epic horse and cart journey up the length of the country, and before any of the ‘...Diamond Day’ songs that saw her tarred under the ‘folk’ title, these recordings reveal a young London girl writing a series of beautiful love songs that resonate profoundly via an...

Bunyan, Vashti

Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind b/w I Want To Be Alone

Dicristina Stair Builders

In advance of the forthcoming double-CD compilation of Vashti's early (pre-'Just Another Diamond Day') recordings from 1964 - 1967, DiCristina is issuing a  limited pressing of 1000 copies of this historic 7” single. Originally released way back in 1965 on the Decca label (as just 'Vashti', no Bunyan), 'Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind' was actually the young London-based singer's debut record.Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, the song was handed to Vashti by Rolling Stones manager / guru Andrew Loog Oldham, who had recently discovered her via an industry friend. Vashti was put in the studio to record the song with the backing of a full orchestra. The track was backed by her own beautiful song, 'I Want To Be Alone' on the B-side and released as a 7” single in May 1965.Despite a whirlwind of promotion around the release and some very positive reviews, the single flopped and Vashti subsequently left the Decca label to pursue more pared-down ambitions, recording a further single ('Train Song' / 'Love Song') for Columbia in 1966, before returning again to Andrew Oldham and the independent Immediate label he had just started. There she recorded three more singles ('Winter Is Blue' / 'Coldest Night Of The Year' / 'I'd Like To Walk Around In Your Mind') between 1966 - 1967, yet each of these remained infuriatingly unreleased, leading to Vashti's disenchantment with the music industry and disappearance for the Isle of Skye and a colourful if obscure...

Bunyan, Vashti

Lookaftering

Dicristina Stair Builders

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  It’s not often you come across an artist you can genuinely refer to as a “cult legend,” but Vashti Bunyan is truly that. A full thirty-five years after her only previous album, the singer returns with a new solo work, her first in all these years, and it is a breathtakingly beautiful album. Now based in Edinburgh, Bunyan’s story tells of the thwarted promise of early fame, disenchantment, long-term exile and eventual rediscovery. In the mid-’60s, after quitting art school to concentrate on music, she was discovered by The Rolling Stones’ guru, Andrew Loog Oldham, signed to Decca and recorded a single written by Jagger / Richards. Reviews touted her as “the new Marianne Faithfull” or the “female Bob Dylan” (though she claimed to be neither), yet further singles remained unreleased, leading to despair and a rejection of the music industry. After living under canvas in the bushes behind Ravensbourne College of Art, she bought a horse and cart and set off in 1968 with her boyfriend for the dream of a creative colony that singer Donovan was setting up on the Isle of Skye. It took nearly two long years to get there, by which time Donovan had left, but the experience formed the songs for Just Another Diamond Day, the album recorded by Joe Boyd in1969 that featured members of The Incredible String Band and Fairport Convention.  On the album’s muted release, rather than hang around London to promote the record, Bunyan...

Bunyan, Vashti

Just Another Diamond Day

Dicristina Stair Builders

Long overdue reissue and first-time available on CD as a domestic pressing, Vashti Bunyan's lone 1970 solo release features contributions from British folk royalty including members of Fairport Convention and preeminent producer Joe Boyd. Vashti was recently heard singing alongside Devendra Banhart on the title track of Rejoicing In The Hands. "Ejected from art school in 1964 for failing to choose between writing songs and painting, Vashti Bunyan was found by Andrew Loog Oldham singing her songs in London. She was given a Jaggers-Richards song to record as a single for Decca and a year later she released a single on Columbia. She went on to record further tracks for the Immediate Label, which remain unreleased. Vashti intended to leave the music business and the city behind for good when she started off for the outer limits of northern Britain in 1968 with a horse and a wagon, heading for the promised land. "The songs were written over two summers and one winter of travelling. After a chance meeting that winter with Derroll Adams (noted Woody Guthrie era folksinger and banjo player) who told her not to "hide her light under a bushel," Vashti took the songs of her journey to Joe Boyd. A year later he recorded Just Another Diamond Day, inviting Robin Williamson of the Incredible String Band, and Dave Swarbrick and Simon Nicol (who also played on Nick Drake's records) from Fairport Convention to accompany Vashti on some tracks. "The album was released late in 1970 to little...