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

progressive rock Progressive rock (shortened as prog rock or simply prog) is a broad genre of rock music that primarily developed in the United Kingdom through the mid- to late 1960s, peaking in the early-to-mid-1970s. Initially termed " progressive pop", the ...

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, vocals, guitars and keyboards), Rikar ...

. 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 and composer 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 more instruments, bef ...

) - 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 singer and multi-instrumentalist, who was best known as the lead vocalist and co-songwriter of the progressive rock band Big Big Train. Besides singing, Longdon played flute, keyboa ...

/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 Geese & the Ghost'' is the first studio album by English musician and songwriter Anthony Phillips, released in March 1977 on Hit & Run Music in the United Kingdom and Passport Records in the United States. It was originally intended to be ...

''. The import and download version features "Kingmaker" as an alternative track to "Master of Time".

Personnel

–

lead vocals The lead vocalist in popular music is typically the member of a group or band whose voice is the most prominent melody in a performance where multiple voices may be heard. The lead singer sets their voice against the accompaniment parts of the ...

flute The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Flutes produce sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In th ...

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German language, German ', from '—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a Reed (mou ...

mandolin A mandolin (, ; literally "small mandola") is a Chordophone, stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally Plucked string instrument, plucked with a plectrum, pick. It most commonly has four Course (music), courses of doubled St ...

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and in modern forms is usually made of plastic, where early membranes were made of animal skin. ...

vibraphone The vibraphone (also called the vibraharp) is a percussion instrument in the metallophone family. It consists of tuned metal bars and is typically played by using Percussion mallet, mallets to strike the bars. A person who plays the vibraphone ...

, keyboards,

glockenspiel The glockenspiel ( ; or , : bells and : play) or bells is a percussion instrument consisting of pitched aluminum or steel bars arranged in a Musical keyboard, keyboard layout. This makes the glockenspiel a type of metallophone, similar to the v ...

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a percussion mallet, beater including attached or enclosed beaters or Rattle (percussion beater), rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or ...

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 aft ...

* Dave Gregory – 6- and 12-string

electric guitar An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external electric Guitar amplifier, sound amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar. It uses one or more pickup (music technology), pickups ...

e-bow The EBow is an electronic device used for playing string instruments, most often the electric guitar. It was invented by the American guitarist Greg Heet in 1969 and introduced in 1976. The EBow uses a pickup and a magnetic feedback circuit to ...

Gregory Spawton Gregory Spawton (born 17 May 1965) is an English musician and songwriter, best known as the bassist, guitarist, keyboardist, songwriter and founder of English progressive rock band Big Big Train. Early life Spawton was brought up in Sutton Co ...

– keyboards, 6- and 12-string electric and acoustic guitars,

bass guitar The bass guitar (), also known as the electric bass guitar, electric bass, or simply the bass, is the lowest-pitched member of the guitar family. It is similar in appearance and construction to an Electric guitar, electric but with a longer nec ...

*Andy Poole – bass guitar,

bass pedals Bass pedals are an Electronic instrument, 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 Pedal clavier, pedalboard and analog synthesi ...

, keyboards *

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

–

drums The drum is a member of the percussion instrument, percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel–Sachs classification system, it is a membranophones, membranophone. Drums consist of at least one Acoustic membrane, membrane, c ...

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 us ...

;Guest musicians *Jonathan Barry – guitar solo (2) *Danny Manners – double bass (3) *Tony Müller – piano (3) *

Martin Orford Martin Orford (born 10 June 1959, Bitterne, Southampton) is an English keyboard player and singer. He is best known as the founder of progressive rock bands IQ and Jadis. He also worked with former King Crimson, U.K. and Asia bassist John Wetton ...

– 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