At that time, I was a bored teenager in a village near Doncaster, South Yorkshire it was a place where very little happened.

Of course, it is an interpretation of what I was doing then while looking back at it now. Evoking the era through the fog of memory, the resulting film is beautiful, hypnotic and all-enveloping.Īlasdair says “My starting point was an interpretation of my memories from the time I first started to listen to Saint Etienne’s music.

There's a whole lifetime's worth of locations in there - Avebury, Portmeirion, Doncaster, Grangemouth as well as London. The album is accompanied by a specially-made film directed by the acclaimed photographer and film-maker Alasdair McLellan who also did all the stills photography for the record. Pete: “We've really pulled apart and dived deep into the samples the concept and each of our interpretations of it have made this a very special sounding album, we hope you think so too.' Sarah: “It's the first sample driven album we’ve made since So Tough and it’s been a really refreshing experience, such fun! It’s both dreamy and atmospheric, late summer sounds.” Pete and Gus have done a properly amazing production job. “To me it’s about optimism, and the late nineties” Bob explains “and how memory is an unreliable narrator. The album was completed remotely, in Hove (Pete Wiggs), Oxford (Sarah Cracknell) and Bradford (Bob Stanley), in collaboration with film and TV composer Gus Bousfield, who contributes to a number of tracks). It also taps into the way we think of our youth, a sense of place, and where we come from.įor the first time, Saint Etienne didn't record together in a studio. I’ve Been Trying To Tell You is an album about memory, how it works, how it tricks you and creates a dream-like state. Was the optimism of that era a lost golden age, or was it a period of naïvety, delusion and folly? The collective folk memory of any period differs from the lived reality. The album was made largely from samples and sounds drawn from the years 1997-2001, a period that was topped and tailed by Labour's election victory and the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers. Thirty years on from their groundbreaking debut Foxbase Alpha, the much-loved London trio Saint Etienne announce their 10th studio album I’ve Been Trying To Tell You slated for release on September 10th via Heavenly Recordings.

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