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The Grim’s second album is Disappointing.

That was pretty much the whole point, just so that I could make that ‘joke’.

That also meant that I had to write a second album. And make it Disappointing. Which seemed like a fair deal for setting up my punchline. I could have done a John Cage thing and just put out a blank album, complete with track listings and covers and so forth, but that seemed a bit cheaty.

I expect many people, if they’ve had the misfortune of listening to Disappointing, would wish that I had taken that easy way out.

The cover pictures are photos that I took while on a road trip through Maine, up towards the Canadian border. I said to Mark, who was driving, ‘wouldn’t it be great if we came across a battered old classic car that I could take pictures of’. And lo and behold, just past an impressive log pile, we found this overgrown auto wreck in the grounds of a church or something.

We had a closer look at the church, and it didn’t seem to be all it appeared. There were some interesting looking tools and implements hanging on the wall in the porch. There were some dogs barking not too far away. Suddenly, it all became a bit Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so we beat a hasty retreat.

For the inside of the booklet, I used a close-up of the car with the ‘church’ looming eerily behind. I also added a bit of gibbering text, as usual, to give the impression that some kind of ‘band’ thing is going on.

The title track, ‘Disappointing’, was supposed to be just that – a disappointment. Not miserable or annoying (at least, not deliberately), but the sort of thing where once you’ve listened to it the only natural response is ‘well, that was disappointing’.

I wanted to create a minimalist symphonic poem, perhaps taking Terry Riley’s ‘Shri Camel’ or Smetana’s ‘Moldau’ as my inspiration. I’ve no idea if I achieved what I set to do which, in itself, is disappointing. So that’s a result.