In 2002, a group of individuals formed a band called brakesbrakesbrakes. They played live whenever they could, which wasn't so often because they all played in other bands. But they played anyway. In 2005 Rough Trade offered to release an album and so brakesbrakesbrakes trooped along to Metropolis Studios for seven days. Just after Valentines' Day, Give Blood was mastered. The recording of The Beatific Visions differed from that of Give Blood in many ways. The first album was almost spat out, with 13 of the 16 backing tracks recorded in one day and the only thing overdubbed a solitary lap-steel part. There was an intensity, an urgency about the proceedings. Plus they knew the songs inside out because they'd spent the best part of 18 months playing them live, so there was no cause to chin-stroke. By contrast in Nashville, some of the songs were written from scratch, or from half-formed ideas one of the four brought to the table, pieced together, shaped, arranged, added to, subtracted from, generating an excitement and nervousness informed by the unknown and the potential of what might be. brakesbrakesbrakes were pleasantly surprised with the results. While the subject matter is drawn from a similar well as Give Blood, it's altogether more specific in its condemnation of certain global events and situations.