Vautrin Vautrin The Thief (1943)

For this, his seventh soundtrack for director Peter Greenaway, Nyman deftly orchestrates a mix of strings, horns, and voices to produce another of his fetching and romantic minimalist backdrops. The opening "Memorial" is the highlight of the lot and drives along with stuttering saxophones, an insistent string arrangement, elegiac brass solos, and the soaring vocals of soprano Sarah Leonard (Leonard would be featured on a large part of the Prospero's Books soundtrack). The piece was originally inspired by a 1985 Belgian soccer match tragedy, in which 39 Italian fans were killed. Nyman utilized a death march in his earlier Greenaway collaboration, Drowning by Numbers, and revives the scheme to great effect here for what would become the main theme of The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover. Nyman contrasts the piece's climatic quality with two relatively sedate yet brooding numbers.

"What We Have Sown" is the sixth album by The Pineapple Thief. The music of "What We Have Sown" perfectly fits the windswept and bleak, yet lush and sunny environment of south-west England captured in the artwork, making for a bracing experience, picturing yourself drifting through that very landscape.

Remixed & Remastered. The Pineapple Thief have often been slated for taking a heavy amount of influence from Porcupine Tree, another British prog band operating around the same time, however a little research reveals that Bruce Soord (Thief's lead vocalist and songwriter) was entirely unaware of Porcupine Tree until Steven Wilson contacted him in question of how similar their sounds were (the two became friends and Wilson helped bring the band onto the Kscope label, a huge step up from Cyclops). This album then, is a natural progression for the band and is what they had been working towards all that time since their inception in 1999…

This re-release of "10 Stories Down" has been beautifully remixed and remastered by the band's mastermind Bruce Soord. Featuring the "8 Days Later" album.
The main influences continue to be Radiohead and modern-day Porcupine Tree, with the use of analog key sounds and atmospheric guitar playing against repetitive downer lyrics.