Double vinyl version of The Unthanks "Mount The Air" album with free promo cd in cardboard sleeve of their "Diversions 4 - Songs&Poems of Molly Drake" album.

The Unthanks invite you to Mount the Air. An invitation to be free, weightless, airborne, to transcend reality, to enter your imagination, to raise the possibilities above the ordinary, to become one with nature, to give yourself up to nature and let the wind carry you to new places. To fly.
Mount The Air is the first studio album by The Unthanks since Last was released....
Mount The Air has been two years in the making and the first to be made in their own makeshift studio in Northumberland, set up in an old granary building, 200 yards from where Rachel Unthank and Adrian McNally live with their 2 sons, 1 and 3 years old.
Mount The Air is released on their own label, RabbleRouser, despite offers of continuation with major labels.
It is the first Unthanks record to feature writing from all 5 core members, including debut contributions from both Rachel and Becky Unthank, as well as continued and more extensive writing from pianist and producer Adrian McNally, including the opening 10 minute title track.
Musically more ambitious than ever, the Mercury nominated Geordies are still a combination of grounded tradition and filmic orchestration, but with Mount The Air, they also take on flavours from traditions as diverse as Spain, India, Blue Note and, er, Trip Hop!
While Mount The Air has all the hallmarks of a band working in intense isolation, since releasing Last in 2011, The Unthanks have also been busy collaborating with Orbital, Adrian Utley (Portishead), Martin Green (Lau), Martin Hayes, The Voice Squad, Sting, Charles Hazlewood, The Moulettes and German composer Werner Cee, while also producing a film soundtrack, an orchestral scale commission for a brass band collaboration with the National Champions of Great Britain, a WW1 project with Sam Lee, explorations of the work of both Robert Wyatt and Antony & The Johnsons, and a children’s song commission. And Rachel Unthank and Adrian McNally had two children and Becky Unthank got married!
When The Unthanks released Last in 2011, Uncut wrote that “The Unthanks seem to regard folk music the same way Miles Davis regarded jazz: as a launch pad for exploring the wider possibilities”. The Unthanks have taken that analogy a step further on Mount The Air, with a beautiful opening title track and single that has echoes of Miles Davis and Gill Evans in their Sketches of Spain period, and climaxes with a euphoria reminiscent of Arcade Fire or Elbow.
Written by Unthanks pianist and producer, and husband of Rachel Unthank, Adrian McNally, Mount the Air is based on the themes of a one-verse traditional ditty, found in a book of Dorset songs in Cecil Sharp House by Becky Unthank, who co-writes some of the words with McNally. The piece features the playing of the world-class trumpet player, Tom Arthurs; a former BBC New Generation Artist and Elysian Quartet collaborator, now immersed in the Berlin improv scene.

Mount The Air is the work of an act who still believe whole heartedly in the value of the album as an art-form. On very limited resources and makeshift facilities, they have shown extraordinary commitment and devotion to that art-form, to create their finest work yet.

Free Promo CD (cardboard slip sleeve) of "Diversions 4 - The Songs & Poems of Molly Drake" A wistful mother makes some simple home recordings in her family sitting room during the 1950s. Little could she have known that decades later, a daughter would become a successful actress, and her son one of the most poetic and influential songwriters ever. Less still, that more than sixty years later, the dust would be blown off her song collection, firstly in 2013 with the release of her own recordings, and now by The Unthanks, who believe her work is extraordinary enough to rank alongside and independently of her brilliant son, Nick Drake. The Unthanks have teamed up with Molly Drake's daughter, the actress Gabrielle Drake, who along with being an invaluable and generous guide to Molly's work, recorded her mother's poems for The Unthanks to set to music. So taken were the band by her performances, and by how she brought the poems to life, making them her own as well as serving her mother's words, that Gabrielle is truly given centre stage for parts of the record, with The Unthanks setting spoken word to music, rather than turning the poems into song. Never intended for public release, Molly Drake's recordings were of limited sound quality, made by amateur enthusiast and husband, Rodney Drake. In a climate where films, stories and music are being rehashed for spurious repeat exploitation, if ever a body of work actually merited reappraisal and fresh presentation, surely the work of Molly Drake is it. The Unthanks have also been able to interpret a few songs that Molly never recorded, based only on Gabrielle's memory of them, transferred to the band using the oral tradition. Bird In The Blue and Soft Shell Crabs are examples. Gabrielle Drake - spoken word; Rachel Unthank - voice; Becky Unthank - voice; Adrian McNally - piano, voice; Chris Price - double bass, guitar, voice; Faye MacCalman - clarinet, tenor sax; Martin Douglas - cymbals on 'Little Weaver Bird'. Tracklisting: 1. What Can A Song Do To You? / 2. Dream Your Dreams / 3. Martha / 4. How Wild The Wind Blows / 5. Little Weaver Bird / 6. Bird In The Blue / 7. The Road To The Stars / 8. Set Me Free / 9. Woods In May / 10. I Remember / 11. Never Pine For The Old Love / 12. The Shell / 13. Soft Shelled Crabs / 14. Do You Ever Remember? / 15. The First Day