Dark Company: Mind Dance (alpha mixes) by Wud Records

Mind Dance (alpha mixes) by Dark Company.

The Mind Dance album represented a brand new lease of life for Dark Company, and one that was somewhat unexpected. These 14 songs were created in 1999 and were the first new songs that the band had made following their rather acrimonious disintegration in 1994.

The main catalyst in reuniting the awesome songwriting partnership of Davies and Greatorex was Sammi, Pete’s daughter. She had played some beautiful flute as a young girl on some of Dark Company’s early tracks and helped shape the melodic content of the classic progressive rock favourite Armed & Dangerous, released by Dark Company on their inaugural Signmaker album.

No mortal was ever able to resist the sustained persuasive powers of Sammi for very long as far as we have been able to tell. Like many others before and since, the skeptical George’s resolve finally cracked after a few weeks. He reluctantly agreed to return to Pete’s house with Sammi one day in the spring of 1999. It was an emotional reunion and the beginning of Dark Company’s third incarnation.

Before very long a number of new songs had been born. The old Silent Running Studios equipment had long since been sold off during Pete’s meltdown and subsequent dark years. Now the band were reduced to the very barest threads. Pete sang and played harmonica, and Sammi sang too, and did a fantastic job as the DC theatre’s prompt. We just love the way you can hear her smile shining through her voice as she prods Pete into action and points to lyrics on the page to keep him on track. He was always a highly analogue force of nature.

George played all the other instruments. Pete wrote the lyrics and most of the vocal melodies. George wrote most of the music and Sammi filled in all the holes, rather like mortar, binding the whole thing together.

They made demo recordings of all the songs that made up the Mind Dance album. The two vocal mics, the horrible drum machine and the basic rhythm guitar parts were recorded as a pair of stereo tracks onto George’s old Tascam 4-track, which left two tracks for bass and lead guitar, and in a couple of places, keyboards. These are truly magnificent recordings, and although the quality is not top class, there is a life and freshness about these demos that make them unique and delightful in their own way.

When Dark Company subsequently started to record all of their back catalogue at the new Wud Records studios, we began making updated versions of the Mind Dance songs, hoping to include all the things they imagined should be present but never were due to a lack of equipment. Sammi was no longer available so we overdubbed Pete as Sammi where necessary and left the rest as empty space.

These recordings are the alpha mixes from Dark Company’s Mind Dance album. These songs are very much still under construction and we will update this page and the recordings with new mixes as they become available. We shall publish details in our News service at the Wud Records website and on Twitter, so be sure to follow us there.

Mind Dance (alpha mixes) by Dark Company.