Sanguine Hum - What We Ask Is Where We Begin: The Song For Days Sessions (2016)

Following hot on the heels of 2015's highly acclaimed double album Now We Have Light, Sanguine Hum return to cast an intriguing light on the early years of their career. Whilst many Hum fans got on board with the albums the Weight of the World and Diving Bell, there will be many completely unaware of a 'lost' gem recorded in 2006 - an album that technically was the band's bona fide debut: Songs For Days. It was lost for a number of reasons. Firstly, the band had yet to settle on the name Sanguine Hum, and for some rather convoluted reasons it came out as Joff Winks Band (a name universally hated by everyone in the band...especially Joff!). Secondly, despite much initial excitement, Songs For Days failed to find a home on a record label and so appeared with minimal hurrah as a digital download only. And what a loss this was! It meant that only a few hard-core fans would become familiar with the epic, soaring Juniper, the twisting Mahavishnu inspired Milo, the childhood nostalgia of Cast Adrift, the traces of Steely Dan blended with Canterbury Prog or the cinematic ambient segues and instrumentals gluing the album together. In short Songs For Days is an album that the band described at the time as being 'kaleidoscopic'. And that's not all. What We Ask is Where We Begin presents an extended master of Songs For Days on disc one, marking its first ever appearance on CD.