A Storm in Heaven

A Storm in Heaven is the debut studio album by the English rock band the Verve, at the time known just as Verve, released on 21 June 1993 on the Hut label. It charted at number twenty-seven in the UK. In 2013, NME ranked it at number 473 in its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Recording A Storm in Heaven was recorded at Sawmills Studios in Cornwall over seven weeks between December 1992 and January 1993, with the producer John Leckie. The title is taken from Jay Stevens' book Storming Heaven, which detailed the effects of LSD on the United States during the 1960s counterculture movement. Leckie said the Verve were "one of the only bands that I’ve ever begged to work with... I just couldn’t believe what I was witnessing." Of the ten songs that comprise the album, only three had been played live before recording – "Slide Away", "Already There" and "The Sun, the Sea". The remaining seven songs emanated from studio jam sessions. "[The album] was pretty much improvised," bass player Simon Jones recalled, stating that the band took a "bold" decision not to include their earlier singles on the record. According to Leckie, the band's compositional practices would regularly see them working until "four a.m. every night ... they were quite a nocturnal band ... they didn't get much sleep. They smoked a lot of dope." The band's guitarist, Nick McCabe, favoured a sound that "was about the tape echo and the reverb" in contrast to the prevailing orthodoxy of studio recording at the time, which he bemoaned as being "still stuck in the aesthetics of 80s recording techniques." According to his bandmate Jones, McCabe "didn’t treat the guitar like a guitar... He didn’t want to be a guitar hero. He wasn’t into Jimmy Page... It was all about texture." The band incorporated a range of diverse influences while composing the music, ranging from Cocteau Twins and Can to free jazz. Penultimate track "Butterfly" was reportedly recorded at three a.m. while playing along with a Steely Dan sample. Drummer Peter Salisbury's percussion drew inspiration from Dr. John's Gris-Gris album, while the brass section from the Kick Horns on "The Sun, the Sea" and "Butterfly" was influenced by Fun House. "The band that Virgin signed, we ditched early on", McCabe said, "... early demos were like Rolling Stones power-pop tunes.