Martyn Bates (Eyeless In Gaza) and Alan Trench (Orchis) return to the ghost-haunted Downs of Southern England for their new album "The Boatman On The Downs".

Twelve Thousand Days are without a doubt producing some of the finest music in their 25 years of existence - abstract and evocative songs that seem to be from the folk canon, so rooted in tradition are they. The band always give more than a nod to past glories with arrangements of 'Arthur McBride' and a song which all children in England once learnt in primary school, 'Early One Morning', which is found here disassembled and fed through the haze of more than half a century of lives lived.

The two traditional songs sit comfortably alongside eight new compositions. 'Comely' sets the tone, full of yearning and loss, and yet basking in hope, full of haunted voices and distant bells; the journey continues through tales of Wayland the Smith and the Silver City inspired by the verse of John Masefield, magickal tales of djinns and other spirits, an elegy to a departed friend, and more.

The soaring voice of Martyn Bates is underpinned by exquisite instrumentation - acoustic guitars, flute organs, bodhrans and bells, mellotrons and analogue synthesisers, taking the listener on a trip through the forgotten highways and byways of a drowned land.

Ltd x 500 copies in a 6-panel digipak.