Back in the late winter of 2022, we were just beginning to emerge from the darkness of the lockdowns and the grief of losing our friend and band member Stefan Cush.

We knew that if we wanted to continue as a band we needed to begin to write and record new material as well as perform the older stuff.

We decided that, in order to raise funds for a forthcoming studio album, we would release 4 digital EP's on Bandcamp, with the lead tracks destined for the new record and the other tracks a chance to demo new songs, release some long-lost rarities and have some fun with covers that we thought suited us.

The idea was always to gather up these 12 extra tracks and release them in physical format when we had completed the series.

All proceeds would go into our recording fund. So here we are. There's quite a lot of Cush on it; from the manic take on 'Telegram Sam' we recorded at Metway Studios in Brighton, to his own unreleased epic 'Wrong'- and with Swill and Paul on the hymn to the picket line 'The Line', recorded back in 1993 and unavailable since then.

There's also Swill's fab takes on Nick Lowe's 'The Rose of England' and Ronnie Lane's 'How Come'.

Elsewhere we've got a slew of demos; try outs of styles and songs, recorded in between takes at Jim Knight's studio, that may go further, may stay as sketches.

'Lonely Train' and 'Islands of Silver and Gold' are demos recorded in Swill's shed studio.

And there's also 'Hanging On' and 'Reeling and Railing', two songs that were destined for COCK-A-HOOP but just didn't fit right with the track listing.

It's good to be able to get them out there, as is all the rest of the stuff in this absolute must for collectors and fans of the physical format.