sold out
White Sails

White Sails, comprising Mellow Drunk's Leigh Gregory with Ville and Jaakko Vilpponen, make their first appearance on Fruits de Mer's Regal Crabomophone label - with a four-track 7", comprising two self-penned songs and two covers of Black Sabbath tracks that are about as far from 'Paranoid' as it's possible to be:
Laguna Sunrise (Black Sabbath)
Fluff (Black Sabbath)
The Answer (Ville Vilpponen)
Death On A Pale Horse (Leigh Gregory)

an excerpt from 'Laguna Sunrise'....



...and a bit of 'Fluff'...




White Sails are another new band joining the Fruits de Mer gang this August - a group combining musicians from the USA (Leigh Gregory) and Finland (Ville Vilpponen and his brother, Jaakko). Leigh and Ville are long-time members of the San Francisco music scene – Leigh fronted Mellow Drunk for many years, while Ville is a member of the power-pop band The Bias; their first album, 'White Sails', was released last year on Ruska Records.
This single came about as a result of a few pints with Nick Leese from Heyday Mail Order – a huge supporter of FdM since day one. I had an idea for an acoustic instrumental single, Nick told me about Leigh’s background and gave me some of Leigh’s solo instrumental recordings to listen to – perfect!
Nick put me in touch with Leigh, I explained that I’d heard his solo guitar pieces and I was looking for someone who shared my love for a couple of very old acoustic instrumentals by….er….Black Sabbath.... long pause while Leigh tracked the songs in question down and came back with a, “Yes, let’s do it!”
Many months later, and here we are – two lovely Sabbath covers, played by Leigh and his new band While Sails, together with two original songs, one written by Leigh, the other by Ville. I hope you like it
Keith – Fruits de Mer Records

PS. Why Sabbath, you might ask? Well, in my humble opinion, the original recordings of Laguna Sunrise and Fluff are just SIMPLE, beautiful little instrumentals, whoever they’re by (so much so, my missus and I had Fluff played at our wedding reception – my idea, I’m afraid). I did have the idea of calling the single Sabbath Mellow Sabbath, given Leigh’s history – but that got voted off somewhere along the way - and quite right too.