II

Breaking up is hard to do. Especially when you've just hit thirty and it's with a partner you've spent the best part of a decade with. Plus, you've just reached a creative dead-end with your band. Many songwriters would beat a hasty retreat to the bedroom with their pain in tow. Ben Holton of Epic45 took a different approach. Instead of brutally analyzing everything in microscopic detail through music, he decided to retreat into creating a classic pop record, exploring the sounds that dominated his childhood. In his mum's utility room. Holton's first album under the My Autumn Empire alias, the Village Compass, was a collection of intricate folk songs, recorded alongside Epic45's output over five years. II is a more cohesive affair, with the songs laid down over a relatively short period of time in the Autumn of last year. Although a regression into the sounds of youth sounds like a simplification, Holton found it was a period of experimentation, embracing new kinds of song structures distinct from anything he'd attempted previously, incorporating key changes, middle eights and multi-part harmonies.

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