RENDLESHAM SOLD OUT AGAIN
Many thanks to those who bought the CD edition of ‘Rendlesham’. This has now become my best-selling album, approaching 450 copies sold across all the formats. Thanks, thanks, thanks. I’m working on a follow-up now.
The CD edition sold out really fast thanks in part to a fantastic review by Neil Mason in Moonbuilding. Neil is a writer who really knows his electronic onions having previously written for Electronic Sound, NME, and Melody Maker and his view of ‘Rendlesham’ is:
“This is classic stuff, properly great”
The full review is reproduced below.
A FAREWELL TO HEXES ‘The Halt Tape In Colour: Rendlesham Expanded’ (Tectona Grandis)
Multi-instrumentalist Adam Leonard is one prolific music-making dude. Chances are the Londonderry-based producer will have served up something or other you have listened to in the last 20-odd years whether you know it or not. Most likely you will know him as Invaderband or most likely as A Farewell To Hexes who return here with a re-rerelease of their magnum opus, which you will know probably know as ‘Rendlesham’.
The album was originally released on tape by TDO Cassettes in 2021, the run sold out in a day, then on vinyl on Polytechinc Youth in 2022, which sold out in under a week, and now it’s here making a CD debut in expanded form. So that’s two extra tracks and a bunch of inserts that include a passport photo of Charles Halt, a button badge, a mini Halt Memo and some actual pine needles from Rendlesham Forest all in a metal tin.
Said it before, but you can tell the quality of an artist by the label company they keep. Adam has a long relationship with Dom Martin, releasing on his Great Pop Supplement label as well as PY, which you hardly need telling is a total seal of approval in my book. Dom has a great pair of ears, I don’t need telling twice to listen to anything he releases. He certainly wasn’t wrong when he backed Adam and, of course, ‘The Halt Tape In Colour (Rendlesham Expanded)’ is excellent.
As you will probably know if you’re from round here, the record is about one of the UK’s most prolific UFO sightings near an airforce base in Rendlesham, in deepest, darkest Suffolk. A long time ago, while I was still at art school, I used to take advantage of the wild amounts of high-quality AV equipment my college had and use it to shoot pop videos. I shot one on location in Suffolk, including a scene deep in a forest not that far from Rendlesham. We had a slew of film lights that must’ve been visible from miles away. Indeed, we were buzzed, and at a fairly low level, by a USAF helicopter with a huge searchlight. One of those moments in life that could have worked out differently if they took against us.
Rendlesham is in such an interesting part of the world. The kings of the East Angles was based there, the Sutton Hoo ship burial isn’t too far away, nor is the expansive Orford Ness and spooky Shingle Street on the coast. This album builds on the legend of the place where at 3am on the morning of 26 December 1980, a security patrol near the east gate of RAF Woodbridge saw lights descending into Rendlesham Forest.
The Halt Tape is a voice memo recorded by deputy base commander Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt when he visted the site of the reported landing in the early hours of 28 December, during which he had his own UFO sighting. “This is straaaange” he drawls at one point. I mean no wonder my makeshift forest film set was buzzed.
Musically, the record brings rich, spooky radiophonica to the fore. Despite the weirdy-woo subject matter it is delightfully tuneful. ‘East Gate Expedition’ could even be described as jaunty. The track ‘The Halt Tape In Colour’, all 18 plus minutes, draws on that recording and will fair send a shiver down your spine. It highlights the utter power of audio. Hearing Halt talking while he was taking in what he was seeing for the first time is mindbogglingly good.
Mysteriouser and mysteriouser. This is classic stuff, properly great.
The Message Tapes 