Hit the North: The Great Escape

By this stage – a decade and a half in – we should take for granted that Chris Heaney’s presence on a record makes it worth listening to.

From his time with Desert Hearts (running through the glory days of Let’s Get Worse and Hotsy Totsy) and on to his work with Escape Act, he’s been one of our most inquisitive, thoughtful and inventive presences.

Or should that be ‘absences’? Because Chris has been uncommonly quiet in the three years since Escape Act’s last single, ‘Salt in Your Eye’.

And he’s been missed. “After we finished promoting the second album, Balance, I met up with Rich Dale (co-founding member) and we agreed that we didn’t want to be in a permanent group situation anymore,” he explains. “After Alan, our original drummer, left for a lecturing job in England, the gang mentality we had built up was dissipating and I didn’t feel like I could commit to the emotional energy anymore. Rich thankfully felt the same way, so we agreed to hit the stop button.”

What, however, could have been a potentially Dead End moment soon proved to be the opening move in a new game. Within a matter of months – and liberated by a looser, more improvisational ethos – Chris had begun stockpiling new material: demoing and recording with long- term producer Andy Miller.

If the decision to work with old pal Miller was an acknowledgment that regeneration, rather than revolution, was the name of the game, so was his decision to stick with the Escape Act name.

“Rich and I had previously talked about Escape Act eventually becoming a collaborative style group that wasn’t based on a permanent line up,” he says. “When I spoke with Rich about how the recording sessions were going he encouraged me to build on the heritage of the group with the new songs. And so a third Escape Act album was now being made. Escape Act exists now as it originally started: as an outlet for me to be creative and try to capture my songs in a certain way. Chasing that sound is what I really love doing.”

Which isn’t to say he’s flying totally solo. In an effort to multi-task, Chris found himself colouring in many of the new songs’ blanks, even picking up a pair of drumsticks for the first time since leaving Desert Hearts. As someone who's always enjoyed the collaborative to-and-fro, he was happy to see the likes of Pat Vandeleur, Linley Hamilton and (wouldn’t you know?) Rich Dale, on-board to lend a hand.

“The dynamic was the same as always,” he says, “except I was probably a bit braver in trying to express how I was hearing things as it wasn’t a ‘group’ record as such this time. Andy, Pat and I worked really openly together and we had an amazing time reaching for how the song should sound. We tried to be bold with sounds on the album and not tuck parts in as much as on the previous record. Andy, Rich and Pat are a joy to work with in the studio, great friends.”

The results – as captured on the fantastic upcoming album, Post Adventures On The Moon – vindicate Chris’s change of approach. Hopefully the next time he plans an Escape Act, he’ll take a little less time breaking free.