“Overspill Estates” is a new four track EP from Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan, which delves back into the “Your Community Hub” sessions to uncover some gems that had been forced off the album.
Gordon Chapman-Fox, the town planner behind WRNTDP says:
“I’d worked on these tracks for the best part of a year, and, in my mind, they were a fundamental part of the whole “Your Community Hub” project. I was heartbroken when they couldn’t make it onto the album, so it’s an enormous relief to see them come to life here.”
The initial concept for the fifth WRNTDP album was to expand beyond north Cheshire, and dedicate a track to some of Britain’s other New Towns. Being part of the project from early on, these four tracks were dedicated to Basildon, Cwmbran, Redditch and Harlow. To give an idea on how long these things can take to gestate, the opening track “The People Of The Town” was performed at the End Of The Road Festival in 2022.
The album cover is an image from the half-modernist, half-mock Tudor houses that were built in Birchwood, Warrington in some of the last large scale building projects that were part of the New Towns.
There are many plaudits for Gordon Chapman-Fox’s Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan recent releases:
“Nobody within the modern age has created synth-led tracks in quite the same way as Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan.”
Far Out Magazine
“Crumbling buildings and decaying ambitions live in the long sighs that populate Your Community Hub, rendered as celestial synth sweeps and patient thuds eking out tension.”
Bleep
“For all its heaviness, it’s Chapman-Fox’s melodies, arrangements, and clear-eyed anger that make Your Community Hub worth seeking out. It masterfully folds time and brings the past right up flush to the present.”
A Closer Listen
“WRNTDP has a very visual sound with the project growing out of a track on the first album called ‘Aerial Views By Helicopter’. Here you can almost hear that ’copter chop-chop-chopping and see the camera tracking the M6 traffic across ‘Thelwall Viaduct’ and sweeping up the grand plazas of Warrington’s ‘Europa Boulevard’. He just ticks all the boxes. Track titles speak volumes. Take ‘Rocksavage’. It’s the location of a massive gas works on the outskirts of Runcorn. Sounding like something off the ‘Drive’ soundtrack, you can almost see moody nighttime footage set to its metronomic beat.”
Neil Mason, Juno
“His new album, The Nation’s Most Central Location, is Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan’s most fully realised work to date. With music that ranges from the lachrymose to the frightening with a semblance of hope sandwiched in between, the album explores the relationship between England’s North and South to reflect on 40 years of broken ‘levelling up’ promises.”
The Quietus
If only visiting Warrington or Runcorn were as majestic as allowing the glacial synths of Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan’s new album to sluice through our ears! The album offers Gordon’s usual mix of mournful remorse and upbeat optimism. By now, however, there’s an underlying anger which burns through tracks such as London’s Moving Our Way and A Brighter and More Prosperous Future.”
Resident Records.