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Artist News Releases
Squid release audiobook of story bundled with latest album, read by Tim Key
By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 26 July 2023
Squid have teamed up with comedian Tim Key to create an audio version of the Paul Ewen written story ‘Lessons’ – which was included as a pamphlet inside the sleeve of the vinyl edition of their latest album ‘O Monolith’.
Key has previously worked with Ewen on a podcast version of his 2007 book ‘London Pub Reviews’. For the audio version of ‘Lessons’, Squid’s Anton Pearson also wrote some music.
“We’ve loved working with these two people we really admire”, says Pearson. “John Fahey’s story insert to his 1967 album ‘The Transfiguration Of Blind Joe Death’ inspired the project, and after reading and listening to Paul Ewen’s amazing work and talking to him, we found he had a great understanding of our work and exciting ideas for the project”.
“He said he wanted to write a story about an out of touch geography teacher and it doesn’t get much more exciting than that”, he goes on. “Similarly, Tim seems to have an amazing grasp of Paul’s humour and his delivery takes it to another level, as is the case on the pub reviews series. I went to see Tim on his ‘Mulberry’ tour and loved it, so was very excited to have him involved”.
“It was fun writing some music for the audiobook, I used stems from the album for some of it and built other bits from scratch”, he adds. “I hope people enjoy listening to the audiobook and can pick up on a few themes from ‘O Monolith’ running through it”.
Ewen himself comments: “It’s one of the best collaborations I’ve ever had. ‘O Monolith’ is both brilliant and wonderful, and it’s been a privilege to add some not-so-serious storytelling about serious issues to this seriously good album”.
Listen to ‘Lessons’ here:
