Tarmac Group face the recession of the early 1990s. In particular, the housing division continued to invest heavily in land even though the market had peaked, leading to provisions of £132m in that division alone. Like his predecessor before him, Pountain was forced to step down as chief executive to be replaced by Neville Simms, previously in charge of construction. Inevitably, the emphasis moved away from housing in favour of construction. In October 1992, Tarmac acquired the privatised government agency PSA Projects to complement Tarmac Construction. This was initially called TBV Consult (reflecting a short lived partnership between Tarmac and Black &
Happiness Is the Road to share these on any networks. The album was originally scheduled to be just a single album. Those tracks became "Volume 2: The Hard Shoulder." In the middle of the recording sessions, the band experienced a major bit of inspiration and songwriting. They decided to follow their instincts, and wound up producing what would eventually become "Volume 1: Essence." These tracks hang together loosely as a concept, and are much mellower than the harder rocking -and non-conceptual- Volume 2. Fans were treated to double the material, and two completely different vibes for their investment. All music written by Marillion, lyrics