March 20, spring solstice: exactly a year ago to this very day, we released Lakeway‘s debut album I’ve Missed The Sun.
His most ambitious and bountiful body of work to date, the album was written during a period of extreme turbulence amid the throes of a lockdown, a health complication that nearly took his life, the collapse of two labels he was signed to – Med School and Diffrent – and a deep pining for the warm old yellow fellow way up there in the sky.
It’s a wonder the album survived at all. But it did and it blew my socks off every time he updated me about it.
Eventually, three years after Lakeway declared it was finished, we were given the green light to take it from Diffrent and get it out into the universe. It’s led to a whole string of shows, support from a wide spectrum of DJs and platforms from Billy Bunter to BBC 6 Music, a variety of follow-up releases on our label and, most pertinently, a deep friendship and creative collaboration that will continue for many years to come.
Have a read of this UKF.com On The Road feature I wrote for a real deep dive into the emotional rollercoaster Lakeway has been on with this album and how much I respect him and his art. Better yet, listen to the full album right here as it soundtracks the very same road trip in that article…
Sadly the tracks individual stems didn’t enjoy the same journey. The whole project was deleted a long time before we even released it.
“I deleted it in frustration,” said Liam in that UKF article I linked above. Mixdown after mixdown and many extra cost re-mastering his new versions had pushed Liam to the very edge. “Frustration at myself! It’s like ‘No, fuck you brain, you’ve been thinking thoughts your whole life and look where it’s got us! Stop. Stop thinking now.”
While he clearly wasn’t thinking about future remixes of this particular body of work, he did immortalise it by deleting its elements. The only versions that exist right now are the finished tracks you can stream or buy online. In a world currently obssessed with digital / AI enhancement, diluting everything to over-perfection so as to appeal to the algorithm and not offend anyone, there’s something refreshingly finite about this flagrant act of deletion.
Years and years of sketches, WIPs and final final final V1, V2, V345s, all gone in a flash. The only thing standing is a 13-strong collection of timeless tracks.
It’s a moment in time.
A line in the sand.
The border between the olden times when he was a bright eyed young teenager, signed to Med School with world at his fingertips to the mature, zero-fucks-given Lakeway you see today. A veteran in a really nice coat who’s still got youth on his side but no longer cares for big label spotlights and naff dancefloor gimmicks.
He never really did anyway.
That’s how deep I’ve Missed The Sun goes. And to top it off, when we commissioned the cover art from Merny Wernz, we realised it was Merny who’d first sent Lakeway music to me many moons ago in 2014 when he worked as a label PR. How cool is that?
The only thing more full circle than this situation is the sun itself.
So we want to celebrate this. And we hope to do that with a remix album of I’ve Missed The Sun.
Or bootleg album, to be more precise…
We have no stems or parts to share but we are putting it out into the universe that we would LOVE for you to grab your favourite tune from the album, work your magic on it, bootleg the Dickens out of it, and send it to us before the next solstice – summer solstice, June 21.
The best will be signed as official remixes and released on a remix album that will drop on the autumn solstice. Yeah we’re all about the solstices right about now.
Only bootlegs from I’ve Missed The Sun please.
All genres are welcome.
We encourage you to be as far out as you can.
Send your bootlegs to demos@1-more-thing.co.uk
Get inspired and get your bootleg on. Here’s a silly video we made last about the length of time I’ve known this album and how much it makes me want to throw a shoe over the border into England.
