After recording one album and a handful of EPs for Manchester-based imprint Melodic ten years ago, David Edwards got the chance to move his Minotaur Shock project to 4AD, a label that had partly inspired him over the years. Reality however rarely matches expectations, and things didn’t quite work out as idealistically as he had hoped. Four years on from his last release for the label, he has picked himself up, recorded his fourth studio album, Orchard, and Melodic have welcomed him back with open arms. Here, he talks about his 4AD experience, working with Melodic again, the freedom he had recording the new album, and how British music has inspired him a great deal this time round.
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MINOTAUR SHOCK
Orchard
MELO080
Melodic 2012
09 Tracks. 48mins38secs

Amazon UK: CD | LP | DLD US: DLD Boomkat: CD | LP | DLD iTunes: DLD

Following a stint on 4AD, for which is recorded two albums, the second of which, Amateur Dramatics (2008), never received a full UK release, although it was eventually picked up by Audio Dregs in the US who gave it a CD release in 2009, Bristol-based David Edwards, AKA Minotaur Shock, has returned to Melodic, the Manchester label which issued his first album, Chiffs-Chaffs And Willow Warblers, over ten years ago. Melodic was Edwards’s home for three years, and published a number of EPs on the label, most of which were eventually collected on Rinse in 2003.

Orchard doesn’t only denote a return to Melodic, but also a return to the rich symbiotic acoustic/electronic sound of Edwards’s early records which often saw him lumbered with the somewhat inelegant folktronica tag, something which he has always been keen to distance himself from. Continue Reading »