Deep (Silent Running album)

Background

Despite the commercial failure of the band's 1987 album Walk on Fire and its two singles, the band began to record their second album for Atlantic Records.

Following the release of the Deep album, the band toured extensively after the album's release but split up shortly thereafter, citing a lack of record company support. The band would later reunite for one final performance at Belfast's Empire Music Hall to a capacity crowd in 1998. Reportedly, demos for the unreleased fourth album are widely available although unofficially only.

Like the previous two albums, Deep was a commercial failure.

The album's title is taken from the opening track "Deep in the Heart of Nowhere".

Both "Deep in the Heart of Nowhere" and "Local Hero" were released as promotional singles on CD in America only.

Recording

The first four tracks of the album were produced by the band themselves with Frankie LaRocka and Peter Denenberg, who both engineered the album. The rest of the tracks were produced by John Eden, whilst LaRocka and Deneberg remixed the tracks produced by Eden. The album was LaRocka's first attempt at production work, where he also played drums on part of the album. Originally, LaRocka had signed the band while working in the A&R department at Atlantic Records.

Drummer Ian Gault departed the band after the initial recording of Deep in 1988 and was therefore replaced by Gary Kirby. Around the same time, Paul Rocks joined the band on keyboards, and the band finished recording the Deep album in New York.

Keyboardist Alex White had left the group back in 1985 to work with Joan Armatrading, resulting in the band relying on session musicians such as Adrian Lee (Mike + The Mechanics) and Clive Gates (New Musik) to record keyboards on the album.

All tracks are original, where the music was written by all three main members of the band; vocalist Peter Gamble, bassist Richard Collett and guitarist Tony Scott, discounting new members Kirby and Rocks, with the lyrics being written solely by vocalist Peter Gamble. Some tracks featured a writing credit to Gault, as they were completed before he left the group.

Release

The album was released via Atlantic Records in the America, Germany and Spain. Like the previous album for Atlantic Records, it was not given a UK release unlike the band's debut album.

To date, the album remains available on now out-of-print second-hand vinyl, cassette and CD.

Critical reception

GloryDazeMusic wrote "Earlier fans of the band would've turned away after their debut, as both 'Walk On Fire' and 'Deep' are quite some way removed from their original direction moulded in the style of Simple Minds and U2. On the other hand, AORsters and melodic rockers would've welcomed them with open arms."

Silent Running

Additional personnel