Fatcat Records

Vashti Bunyan’s ‘Lookaftering’ is 20 years old. To mark the occasion, and also Vashti’s 80th birthday, an expanded 2xLp edition is to be released. As well as the original studio album itself the second LP features demo versions, an alternate take, and a live performance of one of the original album tracks. This edition also comes with reflective sleeve notes from Vashti, producer Max Richter, Devendra Banhart, Dave Howell, and a 16-page lyric booklet featuring a collection of paintings by Vashti's daughter Whyn Lewis – paintings that they both say have closely, and coincidentally, reflected the lyrics of the album at times. Vashti says “the beautiful photograph of Max in the studio playing wine glasses with his young daughter’s violin bow, brings it all back to me - how very fortunate I have been.”

Dating from 2001 to 2005, the demos were recorded at home by Vashti, accompanying herself on acoustic and electric guitar and experimenting with synths – from piano to strings, pipe organ, harmonium, recorders and accordion. The sound is, of course, stripped back compared to that of the finished album, but the live version of Lately recorded at an early “comeback” gig in L.A. in 2006, orchestrated as on the record, is absolutely pitch perfect.

Listening to the demos and the final versions side-by-side while reading the sleeve notes is a wonderful experience, learning and hearing how the songs and the long-player evolved, with Vashti and Max Richter (who produced - and played on - the album), explaining how all of the artists involved (Devendra Banhart, Johanna Newson, Adem Ilhan, Robert Kirby and members of the band Vetiver), touched by Vashti’s original 1970 album (‘Just Another Diamond Day’), jumped at the opportunity to be there. Richter says, “It felt like a community project; a family of people coming together”.