Woodland Band (Parade)

Just when you though it was safe to return to the Groke’s cave, Finders Keepers interrupt Moomin hibernation season to excavate some unexpected buried treasure from Tove’s trove via the cassette vaults of Graeme Miller and Steve Shill. Returning to our much loved stitched-felt format this new limited 7” single not only finds a home for an unaired extended version of 1983’s Woodland Band procession but introduces the first of a series of totally unused Moomin themes taken from private tapes of the then Leeds based DIY composers and artists.

Originally composed and proposed for the 1985 UK translation of the isolated comet story (and potential further episodes) tracks such as The Observatory realise the potential of Miller and Shills intimate four-track tape concoctions if they had been given room to breathe in a potential cinematic capacity, which was oft mooted but never came to fruition. Expanding in depth and texture (benefitting from the notable inclusion of mid-1980s Evantide synthesiser technology) these new, repaired and feared lost forever, will form the basis for a proposed new archival Miller and Shill release in 2020.

This release will also coincide with further unreleased music by Graeme and Steve whose critically acclaimed soundtracks for 1980s theatre productions (such as The Carrier Frequency) which reveal the natural progression from Moomin mystique through to dark ambient, electro acoustic and early sampling akin to the likes of Nurse With Wound, Roger Doyle and similar British visionaries circling around post-Industrial pop genres and multi-disciplinary sound design…. without rowing too far away from the Hattifatteners island.