The Golden Dregs

The Golden Dregs has announced the release of new EP ‘Sorry For Your Loss’ on July 31st via Nothing Fancy. The release, produced in collaboration with London based artist Vogues, features 5 reimaginings of tracks from 2019’s album ‘Hope Is For The Hopeless’.

Alongside the announcement The Golden Dregs, the moniker of London based Benjamin Woods’ solo project turned 7 piece band, has released new reimagining ‘Just Another Rock (Vogued)’ featuring vocals from City Slang signed Anna B Savage.

The conception of the project first came about last summer, before even the album was released.

“I hadn’t seen Vogues for several years as he’d studied at an acting school just north of Paris.” says Woods of the collaboration, “We reconnected in the summer of 2019, a few months before the release of Hope is for the Hopeless. We were both at a loose end; he was stuck for work after finishing up at acting school and I was losing my mind adamant that my record was going to tank.”

The collaboration started to take form whilst Woods and Vogues were driving around his native Cornwall in a beat up old car, location hunting for a music video.

“The only means to listen to music was through the cars dodgy cassette player. I’d burned off the album masters onto a tape to play to him whilst we drove around, but the tape was cheap and the player had seen better days so the tracks just kept on speeding up and slowing down, warping the sound and creating these crazy textures. And soundtracking the dark damp Cornish lanes, it kinda worked. We had to do something with this sound! We played the tape over and over, making recordings on my phone out of the different sounds that came out, and they formed the basis for these tracks.”

The original version, one of the stand out singles from last year's critically acclaimed LP ‘Hope is for the Hopeless’, is here taken straight to the dancefloor, with Anna’s vocal the perfect foil for The Golden Dregs’s honey soaked baritone.

“I first met Anna B Savage nearly 10 years ago, when we were both living in Manchester. I’m a big fan of her music and her voice is just beautiful. We sent her this sped up version of Just Another Rock, and she just ad-libbed the chorus over the top of it, she must’ve sent 5 or 6 takes and they were all gold”

Initially the project didn’t make out of those Cornish lanes. The album was released, and The Golden Dregs ever evolving live show ranging from one man karaoke crooner to 7 piece band grew a cult following paving the way for a busy 2020 that should have seen him play at festivals like End of the Road, Green Man, Latitude and Sea Change amongst others, until the world stopped.

“The project came to a standstill after that, the album release and touring distracted us and it all got forgotten about, until I was clearing through my hard drive at the start of the lockdown. Seemed like a good opportunity to pick up where we left off.”

Nothing Fancy