'It's been a while', says Stuart. Indeed it has. Ten years, to be exact. But if the Huddle House's gestation was a long one the birth itself was as natural and pain-free as could be hoped for. That so many years went by between the very first recording dates at Ken Brake's then fledgling studio (a live take of the title song's arrangement for two guitars) and the final mastering session was due to personal uprootings, multiple commitments, musical or otherwise, conflicting schedules, and the difficulty in those pre ProTools days of getting the whole team in one place at one given time. But there is nothing that sounds 'difficult', or forced, in the Huddle House, a collection of songs that will strike the listener by the freshness of the writing ('Stu's best, and by a distance, since Colossal Youth', says Louis, who's worked with Stuart since Random Rules, released in 1993), the spontaneity of the performances and the richness of their sound. It helped that much of this material was also performed live on a number of occasions before Ken Brake saved the final mixes to disc. The Huddle House cannot be called 'austere', even if the intrumental canvas is one of utmost simplicity: most of the time, a couple of guitars, a couple of voices, and that is about all, barring a splash of colour, a burst of vocal harmonies, a sprinkling of percussion. All songs written by Stuart Moxham, co-arranged by Louis Philippe.
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