Recording the Alive EP has been a real journey. At the start of the year, I had a few half-finished songs and some ideas knocking around, but no real direction. Then in the first week of February I went through a major health trauma which had me horizontal for weeks, and still unwell 5 months on. These three songs document part of that journey.

Eternity is a song I had started in January, with a synth riff and the vocal melody and some scratch lyrics – the odd word but mostly just vocal noises, which is the way I write. I had cut up a drum loop and made it sound a bit broken and thats as far as I’d got.

Staring out of a window, immobile, thinking about this song, I could hear a crisp breakbeat coming in behind  lush strings for the instrumental section between the verses. When I had some energy to sit for short periods at my music station, I found a loop I could cut up and re-programme to sit nicely behind the strings. Each section was worked on in short sessions over about a month, the vocals recorded with very little breath in my lungs, but capturing a moment. I decided not to try and force a chorus melody, but just let the track be what it is. Nice string swells, a crisp cut-up breakbeat, minimal bass and a kind of shimmering effect floating over everything. As I was preparing to mix, I decided to replace the programmed drums on the middle 8 with a miniature kit id been messing around on – one mic capturing a vintage 16″ bass drum, a 60’s Premier snare drum and pair of old Zildjian hi hats. 

The lyrics are about my wife. Recalling memories of her walking beside me along a canal in the Brecon Beacons, strolling along a beach in St Ives and more recently being beside me when my health was in a critical condition. This song is me expressing my feelings for her. Eternal love that goes beyond anything and everything in this short life we share on this planet. 

Sunny Days and Soft Rain. Continuing to find myself horizontal for a number of weeks, I spent a lot of time staring out of the lounge window at the birds coming and going to a large tree over the road, and the clouds drifting bye almost always right to left. I kind of joked to myself that there must be something wrong if the clouds were going in the other direction!

One day it was sunny and raining at the same time, and the rain kind of fell in slow motion across the breeze; soft rain I called it. That view will stay with me forever, as I slowly recovered from a medical condition that hit me like a lightening bolt from nowhere and changed my present. The mind can overthink in such circumstances when faced with our own mortality. I’m now much more thankful for each day on the planet. 

Unable to focus on anything for long, but craving some creative output, I put some ideas into MPC Beats on my MacBook. A piano loop over a sparse beatbox. With a working title ‘downtime’, I managed to whisper some vocals – the lyrics collated from ramblings on my notes app. 

When I transferred the idea to pro tools, I wanted to keep the original fragility of the song. I added some atmospherics but kept the original beatbox and piano. Towards the end, I wanted the song to lift into a feeling of hope for the future, with lush strings and a steady groove, but I didn’t want anything too overpowering. I went for Mark Bell-esque filtered drums and some live bass to underpin the strings, with some added melodica with stacks or reverb for added atmospherics. 

I take a breath and feel alive.

One Day. I awoke one morning with a syncopated drum beat in my head (following a binge on Thom Yorke’s solo albums) and a rough vocal melody. I set up a basic drum kit  – kick, snare and a tom, with no cymbals and just two mics. I already had a half finished sketch of a song that began with sequenced bleeps but much faster and in a different key. I cut the two together and had something. The rest of the song developed from there – I could hear it transitioning into a middle eight section with vocals floating in space followed by something more up-tempo at the end. A circus of sounds floating around, underpinned by a cool baseline and offbeat drums. The end drums just happened and I tidied them up in a couple of takes, with some added tambourine. There’s quite a few guitar tracks floating in and out on the end section and the strings give it a nice lift. I don’t know if I managed to fully express what I could hear in my head but it’s close. 

The lyrics are about going through a period of re-adjustment and change. Leaving things and people that you love behind, not because you want to but because you have to. Sometimes you have to cut from the past in order to move into the future. 

I hope you enjoy it.