Gilroy Mere - Furlongs Gilroy Mere

Clay Pipe Music is thrilled to welcome back Oliver Cherer with a new Gilroy Mere album ‘Furlongs’.

Since his 2023 album Gilden Gate, Ollie has kept himself busy. He has recorded an album and toured internationally with the Miki Berenyi Trio, and played bass in Lol Tolhurst’s band. Alongside this, he has made three albums with Hastings-based group Aircooled, and performed live with them in support of The Jesus and Mary Chain and Suede. He has also collaborated with long-time writing partner Riz Maslen on the soundtrack for Magick Hastings, a film by Michael Smith.

In early 2025, Ollie was diagnosed with cancer and had to cut short a tour to return home, travelling daily to Brighton Hospital for radiotherapy treatment.

“Every day for six weeks I made the forty mile train journey from my home in St-Leonard's-on-Sea along the foot of the Downs, passing the Long Man twice a day. With my laptop and some headphones, I filled the journey time making music. Cutting through the landscape that Ravilious had painted 90 years earlier, the muted colours and undulations became textures, tempos and modulations. After more than a month immersed in his scenery, my laptop sketches crystalized into something that began to sound like a record, and by the end of the six weeks, I had more than enough material for this album.

Many of the pieces on this record were inspired by specific paintings that were already familiar to me, while others are reactions to the landscape gently swooshing past the windows of the train and which I knew from walking its footpaths with an ordnance survey map in hand. Furlongs is the name of the cottage where Eric and his wife Tirzah often stayed, and where he created many of his paintings. Beachy Head and Chalk Paths are tributes to well-known Ravilious works, whereas Hope Gap is an exploration of a place with an isolated coastal bleakness that I felt reflected the sadness of his early death in 1942, on an RAF search and rescue mission over the Icelandic sea.

While finishing the recordings I called on friends to help out on a few pieces which lead to contributions from Helen Edwards on clarinet, Hutch Demoulpied on trumpet and flute and stalwart collaborator Riz Maslen on flute and vocal. It was all written on the train and recorded in my studio, The Laundry, in St Leonard's on Sea.”

Almost a year after diagnosis, Ollie was given the all clear, and is now back at work touring, recording and playing music. 

credits

releases September 4, 2026

Clarinet – Helen Edwards
Voice & Flute – Riz Maslen
Trumpet, Flute & Baritone Horn – Hutch Demouilpied
All Other Instruments – Oliver Cherer

All Tracks Written by Oliver Cherer, Except “On the Road”
Written by Oliver Cherer & Riz Maslen

Mastered at RedRedPaw by Antony Ryan

Recorded at The Laundry During the Summer and Autumn of 2025