tenek – Images of Heaven 2007
Back in late 2007 we recorded our version of Peter Godwin‘s 1982 cult synth classic track “Images of Heaven” at Geoff’s then studio down in West Sussex. This would have been just after we’d released our debut EP and I don’t think we’d started recording in earnest for our debut album ‘Stateless‘ at this time. We were just having great fun writing, recording and trying various things out. There’s quite a few ‘lost’ tracks from this period that were never released such as ‘Twins‘ and ‘Standing So Tall‘ and if you heard the latter you’d know why, it wasn’t our finest moment!
“Images of Heaven” is a song we’ve both always really liked, back in 1982 I heard it a few times but I remember it being quite difficult to get hold of as it wasn’t a Top 40 hit. It was only when the internet came along that we managed to locate the track and fell in love with it all over again. It was possibly me who suggested covering the track, I thought it would be nice to update it and give it a more ‘eletcro-rock’ feel whilst trying to retain many of the original synth parts and the vocal melodies although we did change the phrasing in some parts to suit our vocals better. Geoff feels that he could have sung it better but these were only guide vocals and if we’d continued with the track then we’d definitely have re-recorded them.
Back in 2008 I actually contacted Peter Godwin about covering the track and he was very supportive. We promised to send him the track when we’d finished it but we got so far and then obviously moved on to the more pressing work of writing and recording the ‘Stateless‘ album. It then got lost in our archives and hadn’t been listened to again until very recently. I was reminded of the track as it currently features in a Facebook 80’s competition about forgotten tracks from 1980-84 so decided to search for our version on various hard drives in my studio.
Very few people, apart from family and friends, have heard it. And listening back, it’s obviously not quite finished to our usual high production standard but still sounds pretty decent. You’ll also have to excuse the daft ‘whizz’ sound at the end, we often used to put strange sounds on our demos to amuse ourselves. As Geoff said recently, “the whizz is typical tenek humour”!! I also finally sent the track to Peter after 13 years and he was very complimentary which was a relief as I was a little apprehensive to be honest, he seemed to really like what we’d done with his song. Who knows, perhaps we might go back to it one day and finish it properly if it gets well received.
So, HERE it is! A forgotten track from the tenek vault!
Enjoy!
– Pete & Geoff