History

Rainfall Records started way back in the Mysts of Tyme (or to be more accurate May 1992) when Steve Lines, Clive Jones and Paul Ricketts (of Unhinged Magazine) got together to form a record label with the express purpose of releasing the first single by Steve's band Stormclouds. The music was recorded on 4 and 8 track Tascam's at Steve Cloudbase Studios and Ken Flynn's Thunderhead Studios, both based in Calne, Wiltshire. CLOUD 001 - "Lost In Space" c/w "When Worlds Collide" was released by Rainall Records in December 1992.

Following this the trio released CLOUD 002, the Stormclouds debut album "Nightmares In The Sky" in a limited vinyl pressing of 500 in March. By the end of the year the album was almost sold out and "Nightmares" was released on CD format with extra tracks and several alternate takes of songs which appeard on the vinyl release.

By the time the label came around to putting out CLOUD 003, "Sleep No More" by Stormclouds, Paul Ricketts had decided to part company with Rainfall Records to concentrate on his Unhinged magazine, leaving Clive and Steve to put out the second album on the label by Stormclouds. "Sleep No More was released on vinyl in September and on CD in December of 2000.

CLOUD 004 was the ambitious H. P. Lovecraft album put together by Steve and released as a 2CD set in July 2001

At this time Steve was getting back into producing artwork for the small press and this is when he came upon the writings of John B. Ford. The pair soon developed a friendship and Steve began illustrating many of John's stories. Impressed with the style and visual imagry of John's work Steve suggested the idea of putting out a limited edition hardback of some of John's selected stories through Rainfall. John joined the production to work on the project with Steve thus it was that Rainfall Records & Books was born.

CLOUD 005, "Tales Of Devilry & Doom" by John B. Ford was published on 13th August 2001 to critical acclaim and set the high standard that Rainfall has sustained throughout their publishing ventures.

CLOUD 006 was another departure for Rainfall Records as it was the first CD release not to feature Stormclouds. It was an archival live album by 'Paisley Undeground' giants The Rain Parade. This project was the brainchild of Clive Jones and he worked on the project with partner Pat Thomas (our man in the USA). The release was a great succes and went into a second pressing and is now sold out

Rainfall continued to issue a series of high quality paperback collections and anthologies by some of the talented writers within the small press. John and Paul Kane also revived John's old BJM Press publication Terror Tales.

In 2002 John organised the ambitious Terror Scribes weekend in Birmingham held over the weekend of September 6th - 8th. The event was a great success and you can read more about it in the pages of Terror Tales #1.

And Rainfall are still going stong today with several exciting and literary and musical projects in the pipeline.

Watch these pages and keep watching the skies . . . !