“Hearing the night siren’s call” - The launch party for Steve’s new album as seen by Alan Hewitt.

I had already received an invitation from Steve and Jo to come down to chat about Steve’s latest album, The Night Siren as part of the preparations for TWR’s 100th edition/30th anniversary celebrations and you can read the results of that chat in the centenary edition folks. A few days later, I received another invitation, this time to the launch party for the album and so, after a few hasty telephone calls, a few days down in \London were duly organised as the interview and launch were several days apart. This resulted in a very productive few days for TWR some of which you can read about here… Anyway, after spending a lovely afternoon in a surprisingly sunny London, I made my way to the t rendezvous point where I met up with a good friend, Jonathan O’Neill and mein hostess Kate Green who had also been invited and we made our way to the venue, the Screen On The Green cinema in Islington. It did seem slightly weird to see Steve’s name and the album title in big letters on the cinema front … almost like a gig!

We made our way in to the cinema to be confronted by a whole series of a familiar (and not so familiar) faces. It was great to catch up with most of Steve’s current band including Nick Beggs who greeted me as only he can… Steve’s mum June came over and had a chat as did John Hackett and his good lady Katrin. John was celebrating his birthday in fine style!

It was also great to finally get to meet Attila Egerhazi from Djabe and a good conversation was had with him and also with Paul Gosling whose film work with Steve over the last few years has been simply amazing.

Then it was time to sit back, relax and listen to the album in full in glorious 5.1 but not before Steve had taken the stage and gave us some insights into the background behind the album, which were, as usual from the man, both informative and amusing. Not being possessed of a 5.1 system myself, hearing it this way brought out even more of the nuances of the music than previously heard. The album is a grower rather than one which immediately leaps out at you , and like so much of Steve’s work the music evolves in your mind every bit as much as it did in the composer’s.

Then it was time for a few more brief words with people before we emerged blinking into the nightlights of London. Once again my thanks to Steve and Jo for allowing me to be part of what was another special evening. To Jonathan and Kate for being such good company and to all of the people who came and said hello or who were introduced to me during the course of the evening. We really MUST do it again sometime!