The Black Ships release free Kurofune EP

The long awaited debut by Nick McCabe and Simon Jones of The Verve was released on Wednesday the 25th of May 2011.  McCabe and Jones are accompanied by Davide Rossi and Mig Schillace under the aptly titled persona, The Black Ships.  Davide provided violin arrangements on The Verve’s final album, Forth.  Those sessions are what prompted McCabe and Jones to pursue The Black Ships after The Verve’s short-lived reunion was over.

Kurofune, The Black Ships debut EP is available for a free download here.  The brains behind The Verve, guitarist Nick McCabe, made the following statement regarding Kurofune.

You just know when things are right.  The four of us met in various circumstances and each meeting was accompanied by this feeling of “we’ve absolutely got to do more together”.  And here we are.  The joy of music: what does that really mean?  Living and breathing it. Obsessing about detail whilst discovering the beauty in chance, and then doing what is necessary to give it life.  All the peripheral activity, traditionally taken out of your hands in service of the big organisations of yore becomes a joy in service of the music.  It is undoubtedly the hardest work we have collectively put into any band, but the satisfaction is already huge.

“Kurofune” was spawned/recorded in Noah’s tiny “Best Kept Secret” studios in Copenhagen in one of the many feverish explorations of what we do as a unit.  During the course of other work for earmarked album material, revisions and rethinks, extensions and reductions occurred at: my place in Walworth, South London, Davide’s abode in Copenhagen, and Si’s place in Chester.

“Rain Down On Me” was never going to make the album in it’s original form, it is too much of its own man, it is only here that right and properly, it stands unmolested by the distraction of “other songs”.  “Dawn Till Dusk” exists in several versions, here, we give you a rain soaked soundscape to get lost in.  “Northern Rock” is a lullaby to a fallen empire.

I mixed and did final edits over three days in May at my studio in South London and mastered it during rehearsals whilst at Si’s in Chester.

This music is of and about the connections and disconnections of human life.  It has its own will, and we are glad to obey it.  It is a grand thing to be aboard The Black Ships.  Welcome.

–Nick McCabe

The Black Ships – Kurofune (length 25:51)
1.  Rain Down On Me
2.  Dawn Till Dusk
3.  Northern Rock