The Helicopter of The Holy Ghost

Canterbury-based pop/rock outfit the Helicopter of the Holy Ghost formed as an informal supergroup to revive a set of unreleased demos that Billy Reeves had recorded during the 1990s. Reeves, already recognized for establishing theaudience and for his collaborations with Sophie Ellis-Bextor, brought together Mark Morriss of the Bluetones, Mark Peters of Engineers, and Crayola Lectern of Lost Horizons. In 2000 he had secured a Sony deal for his band Yours, yet a severe automobile accident before the group could gain momentum left him comatose and afflicted with amnesia. Nearly twenty years afterward, in 2017, his brother unearthed two minidiscs while sorting through stored belongings; the discs, salvaged from the wreckage, held several of Reeves’s original demos. Reeves then assembled the musicians to complete the songs, thereby establishing the Helicopter of the Holy Ghost. Their first full-length release, the 2021 album Afters, was co-produced by Richard Archer of Hard-Fi and included contributions from Simon Raymonde of the Cocteau Twins alongside Thomas Anderson of Gazpacho.