Cheersquad Records and Tapes have another sensational single to present to you! Disneyland in Dagenham is the title track and first single from the upcoming album by the enigmatic UK songwriter Scott Lavene.

Monologuing in warm deadpan over a wandering acoustic guitar, it encapsulates his conflicted feelings about the county he was raised. 

“A cowboy kind of place, a bit rough around the edges,” as he puts it. “A lot of funny stuff happened that you’d tell to normal people who’d be like, ‘What the fuck?!’” It’s changed a lot since then. Filming the video for the song, he and his sister took a drive around their old haunts along the A13. “The sewage works don’t smell anymore and they’re now calling Rainham ‘East London’, which is hilarious. It made me grateful for my past, for the shit we could get away with back then.”

In the 1980s the Walt Disney Company were considering building their first European theme park not on the outskirts of Paris, but in Dagenham, Essex. In his youth, Scott Lavene used to pick up drugs from a dodgy flat overlooking the proposed site. Disney and Dagenham were never a good fit, he thought, as he stood on the balcony one evening as the sun set, awaiting an overdue hash delivery.  It never happened of course – perhaps the multinational corporation were put off by the sewage works and car factories that Mickey Mouse and Goofy would have counted as their neighbours.

The album is due to be released on the 10th of May 2024 and is available for pre-order now!.