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Pre-order now available, due for release 29th September, plus select for an optional free label sampler "A Wayside and Woodland Compilation: Bedrooms, Fields & Houses" which features an alternative version of a track featured on this album.

If you go down to the Forest (of Dean) don’t dare to ask Who Killed The Bears?

“There is a true story, about the hounding of some travelling entertainers and their dancing bears and how the bears were killed by a mob in revenge for an invented attack on a local girl in the woods between Cinderford and Ruardean. This is at the heart of the whole record.” writes Cherer.

The Myth of Violet Meek will be the second release by Oliver Cherer (under his own name) and will be brought to you in late September: as the nights draw closer, and the shortening of the days coincides with the winding down of summer. And as we begin to reflect that flicker of sunshine youthfulness and perhaps just how horrid we once were.

Part fabrication, part reminiscence Violet Meek is the girl in the woods. It’s possible that she was killed by a bear. It’s certain that she was damned by her reputation and with this Cherer draws on, at times, awkward memories of his own youth living inside The Forest of Dean “rumours and fumbling, burgeoning sexuality in the woods between the rivers Wye and Severn”

There is also an abundance of dark wit and just plain old fashioned beauty in the mix, which are ever present in Oliver’s other musical projects. Non-blank, Rhododendron and more notably Dollboy.

Dennis Potter had a few words on the subject, being a native of The Forest of Dean “those rather ugly villages in beautiful landscape”, we can only imagine that the occupants of those houses were also the ones keeping the secret of this once extremely emotional and enduring folktale that at one time would lead to a ‘kicking’ merely for uttering the question Who Killed The Bears? - coincidentally the first track on this album, let’s hope it doesn’t land us all in trouble.

If you’d like to get further into the atmosphere of this album, you can also watch Dennis Potter’s The Beast With Two Backs.

Tracklisting

A1. Who Killed The Bears?
A2. Delicate Blooms
A3. Poor Violet
A4. O My Darling Boy
A5. Lament For a Girl And Two Bears
A6. Violet Says…
A7. Ruined
B1. Valentine
B2. Unspoken
B3. A Bear With Two Backs
B4. Slag
B5. Trees
B6. Violet And Her Sisters