1986. I’m on a plane high over the arctic wastes of Greenland en route to Vancouver, Canada.I’ve been invited to play a three show residency at a small club named “Channel One” and I’m nervous.....I’d built up a mental picture of North America from a stream of ‘horror’ news reports, which had left me a little afraid to step out of a car upon arrival. In short, it felt like I was flying into a dangerous landscape of gangs, guns and glittering blades.. no place for a naive boy from Dagenham.It was in this mindset that I wrote the lyrics to “Center Bullet”. In the years leading up to this adventure, I’d built up a long distance friendship with cEvin Key of Skinny Puppy and he asked me to write lyrics and add vocals to a long instrumental piece of theirs. Don’t ask me for an explanation of those words...they are pure train of thought, but you could say there’s a lot of blood.CEvin manned the mixing desk for my shows, and the recording of “Center Bullet” went so well, we decided to keep a good thing going. It’s 2020, and Tear Garden just turned 34!As for my American fears, Vancouver was a city where the cars stopped for a pedestrian to cross the street and it seemed like everyone smiled all the time.I’m sceptical when it comes to news broadcasts in these more informed times.This collection focusses on the 80s recordings, including a few songs from “Eye Spy with My Little Eye”, an album where many of cEvin’s instrumental pieces from that decade were finished by us both 20 years later. Tracks 1,3,8,9 from “Tired Eyes Slowly Burning”; tracks 2 & 6 from “The Center Bullet EP”; Tracks 4,5 & 7 from “Eye Spy With My Little Eye” © all rights reserved