……But before that is to come his book about the sea. The medium that every English composer must confront at some time in their working lives. Yates went to Dorset to finish ‘Out of the Blue’, shutting himself away in a cottage on top a cliff with just a pen and paper for company. In the same way that perch swam through the pages of ‘How to Fish’ it is the bass who swims through ‘Out of the Blue’. These are the fish that Yates is obsessed with now. Fuelled by the knowledge that not a single one of the quarry he is baiting the hook for will have a name or will have even been caught before. The empty beaches of a chalk lined coast crumbling away into the sea becoming the new swims. Places without rules or licences. The occasional shoals of mackerel bigger than towns which come and go quicker than the time it takes for line to snap. And on their fringes, bass, the size of which the hopelessly addicted angler, dressed in Moncrieff hand me downs, can only dream of.

(written by John Andrews and taken from his article ‘Gone Cuckoo)‘