Track Of The Day: Paul Draper - 'Feeling My Heart Run Slow'

Today's Track Of The Day is one that hasn't been given an official release yet. It's a song that marks the long awaited moment that fans of the hugely underrated 90s four piece Mansun have been hoping for: the return of Paul Draper. Following the break-up of the band in 2003, Draper announced that he would return with new material. Aside from a few songs written for Skunk Anansie vocalist Skin's 2006 album 'Fake Chemical State', and a track called 'Greyhounds In The Slips' co-written with The Joy Formidable in 2008, nothing has ever materialized. In an interview with RW/FF last year, Draper revealed that he started work on a solo album in 2003 and scrapped it. "I lost interest in music in the way I had an interest in it before the split. I did try my best to carry on, so I would like to say a genuine sorry to everyone still reading this and who wanted to hear the solo album I wrote. Im genuinely sorry but it wasn't of my making, I was sort of forced out of music. I felt at the time that a lot of people had taken advantage of my trusting nature and also the fact I find it difficult to see the bad in people and keep walking into disasters. I didn't want to walk into another disaster so I gave up on making my own records to some people's delight, and cancelled my recording contract with EMI which I know seems insane but it makes sense to me." You can read the rest of that interview HERE.

After Mansun fans heard that Draper would be playing with Leeds supergroup Menace Beach during a BBC 6Music session for Marc Riley, the show received a huge amount of emails, leaving Paul surprised. Around the same time, fans launched a petition asking for him to bring out the unreleased solo album, and a while later he told them that he was "giving it serious thought". After he and an assembled band began working on a number of tracks in July of this year, Paul revealed that he would indeed be releasing some of these songs in the future, and that his album was provisionally titled 'Spooky Action From A Distance'. Last month in August, fans from all over the world descended on the band's hometown of Chester for a Mansun fans convention, where the thunderous 'Feeling My Heart Run Slow' was premiered, and given a rapturous response. A video bootleg of the song (with fairly clear sound quality) can be found below. And its Bowie-meets-Nine Inch Nails-meets-Mansun sound and killer chorus makes this a most welcome return from a genuinely undervalued musical legend. And it's his birthday today (September 26 2014), so there really couldn't be a better track to feature today... Paul has also been working with Catherine AD, co-writing, playing on and producing some tracks for the upcoming debut from The Anchoress, which is due early next year. It's preceded by an EP called 'One For Sorrow' in November, and more info can be found HERE.