Gilroy Mere - Furlongs Gilroy Mere

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 Olly was given the all clear, and is now back at work touring, recording and playing music.