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Subconsciously the sound I was originally aiming for was that of artists from the 70’s – singer songwriters like Joan Armatrading, Hall & Oates, Marvin Gaye, Rickie Lee Jones and Jackson Browne. There are some beautifully made albums during that period, even by artists that may be seen as unhip now; I’m thinking of Bread, Helen Reddy, Leo Sayer, Albert Hammond, Billy Joel, Elkie Brooks, Gilbert O’Sullivan or even Elton John. There is a real craft in recording these albums so they pass the test of time, all credit to the producers and engineers like Glynn Johns, Gus Dudgeon, Arif Mardin, Ken Scott, Phil Ramone etc. That’s what I wanted: an album that you would find difficult to date. Contemporary artists like Aimee Mann, Norah Jones and Rufus Wainwright also hold these production values, where the song is the star, not a riff or solo or beat. I wanted to make an album where the song carries you through, not gimmicks.

There was also the influence of Mark Hollis that permeates every note on the album. He sadly died while the album was being written (February 2019) and his passing inspired Kevan to write the initial draft of words for ‘Into the Spirit’. We have been in awe of his solo work and particularly the last three Talk Talk albums, as well as his whole philosophy relating to songwriting and recording songs. He has talked about capturing a spark that often happens during a performance but can’t be recreated at that same level again - (“When you improvise, and you play something for the first time, you kind of play it at its peak. And if you play something and then think ‘Oh I like that’ and then you replay it, you never quite get it. It’s like the thing of demoing; if you demo a track, no matter how badly you try to demo it, there will always be a quality within it that you subsequently would try to recreate, which you shouldn’t do.” - Mark Hollis). I kind of agree with this up to a point and I suppose because I am not a technically gifted musician, I can never truly recreate a part, I just play or sing again and it just comes out different anyway... I am constantly improvising and changing my parts.

Mark Hollis also said: “I like silence. I get on great with silence, you know. I don’t have a problem with it. It’s just silent. So it’s kind of like, well if you’re going to break into it, just try and have a reason for doing it.” This is the hardest thing for me musically – I don’t often have the confidence to have nothing going on. I feel I have to keep feeding the listener so they don’t get bored and walk away. I don’t know if Mark had that confidence or was so focused on his vision that nothing had an impact on it. Of course the silences on his albums are not actually silent, there is always a room ambience that you can hear. I suppose my focus was making our album flow as seamlessly as ‘Spirit of Eden’ or ‘Laughing Stock’ – they are the pinnacle for me in writing and recording music.

There was always a feeling as well whilst writing and recording the album that I wanted to get away from standard formulaic composition. Pop songs have evolved from the standard 12 bar blues/rock n roll standards of the 50’s, and are more complex now, however, they do tend to follow certain conventions. The charts now are probably more guilty of this than ever before, mainly due to popular music being a very narrow genre or because the current sound and production values permeates a lot of material being played. When I grew up in the 70s and 80s the variety was far greater even within pop music. The songwriters and producers took more risks, rather than always following the herd. There are reasons why pop records are made a certain way and it concerns holding a listener’s attention for the whole three minutes and making sure by the end of the song, they are left with an earworm, usually the chorus or an instrumental hook. Of course there are examples of hit songs defying convention, like Squeeze’s ‘Up the Junction’ not having

a chorus, or Prince’s ‘When Doves Cry’ not having a bass line, but these songs had other things going on that pulled in a listener, and are the exceptions that prove the rule. It is a fine balancing act between being original and interesting, or being original and unlistenable. So I wanted songs that would have enough going on melodically without being too subtle, or conversely having an irritating hook that you are sick of within a few listens. I wanted a listener to discover the layers within the track over multiple plays. I was also determined to keep the emotional content within the words so an audience could have a connection with the material. It is true that the melody is king to first time listeners, but over time, the lyrics can have a profound effect, so needed to be deep enough to hold up to scrutiny.

It is worth mentioning that when music is recorded by anyone (professional, semi- professional or amateur), it is always produced under certain limitations. These limitations are different for every artist and they can be things like: financial, equipment, imagination, skill, location, environment, time, audience expectations etc.

The limitations for this album were that I didn’t have a proper recording studio with pro- quality equipment, just my home studio. Also there wasn’t anyone else available or willing to play any of the instruments. This is why initially I recorded just as a singer songwriter: acoustic guitar and a single vocal. At that point I was going to give the project and the songs to Kevan should he wish to pay for studio time and session musicians and produce the album himself. However, as a writer I still wanted to see the project through, to have at least my own vision of how the songs should be, even if in the end other producers became involved separately later on. I learnt to live with the limitations of recording at home and self-producing, because otherwise nothing would have been done. That is the choice really: do it under the limitations, or don’t do it at all... and I had to do it.

And yes, of course the production would have benefitted from having actual musicians playing, instead of me playing all the real instruments and programming all the synth instruments. It may have been better with a mixing engineer involved on the final mix using a pro-desk, however, this route was out of our price range. We did manage to finance a live drum session with Chris Reed on two songs – however, these were done remotely with Chris recording his parts in his studio and sending me the sound files of his kit.

Unlike a professional artist though, I was not limited by time constraints or audience expectations (as we had no audience) – so I was able to let my imagination go wherever it wanted to make a set of songs that was everything I had envisioned, regardless of how long it took. Saying that, does the album match the vision I had originally constructed in my head? Well, no. If I am honest the artistic vision is always perfect and elusive; whereas recording is exact because you are capturing human performance with its inherent errors and imperfections. Every artist has to live with this. Frank Zappa said that if you get close to your original idea, you are doing well. I certainly got close. What is interesting though is that some of these songs grew and changed during the recording process; ‘Into the Spirit’ for example originally had no break in the middle, but at the line “Listen to the quiet now” it just seemed apt to stop the song and listen to the ambient room for as long as possible, so I added in extra bars for the silence and then the drum break that follows. I always imagine Mark Hollis smiling and telling me the silence is the best part of the song. So in some ways, ‘Into the Spirit’ is actually better than my original vision, as that was pretty conventional. The times when I have broken convention are the parts of the album I like the most. One day I will make an album that has no conventions at all, but it will probably be unlistenable to anyone else.

The thing is though, when I listen to the original versions of these songs that were recorded on a phone at the time I was writing them, they have such feeling in them – Mark Hollis spoke about how the initial take of a recording is always the most honest and perfect, and then after that you are just trying to recreate that beauty, but never can. It is true that as soon as I have a big condenser or ribbon microphone directly in front of me I somehow try and perform, whereas when it is just a phone on the desk recording the room, my natural performance is captured effortlessly and is often better.

I also have a problem with my recorded voice. I have heard it on all my songs up to now and it’s obviously around me all the time, and I am just sick of it. I really wanted a different or better vocalist on these songs, but it is impossible to find singers who are willing to sing other people’s songs, unless they are professional/session singers. So when there’s a choice of having me sing or no one, well I have to do it. Sometimes it sounds ok and as Elliott Smith once said: “Sorry about the high notes.. but, you know, you can tell what it’s supposed to be.. which is about as good as anything I’m gonna do.” He also said: “I'd be really happy if I could write a song as universal and accessible as 'I Second That Emotion' - it's a big game to play, trying to make something that's mainstream enough and still human." And also about a performance he cut short: "I had to stop it because it's... you know, what's the point of playing a song badly? It'd be better to play it and mean it, than to just walk through it." I love that sensibility and I tried to mean every note played and sang. You can hear the frustration I have singing during ‘Focusing the Light’ – that scream that happens twice in the track, is me. There are a few notes in that song that I can just about reach and on a few takes I couldn’t make it so screamed with anger at my inability to sing well enough.

From writing to recording and mixing and mastering, to creating the artwork, the album took over 3 years to complete. Bear in mind that this wasn’t 3 years of 9 to 5 sessions, I have a normal day job and a family, and the writing and recording has to fit around that. I loosely worked out that if I added all the actual time I worked on the album it would have been (based on an eight hour day in a real studio) 75 days in real time since January 2019. That still sounds like a long time doesn’t it! It would have been an expensive album with that amount of studio time - at a modest studio it would have cost about £18000! As it is, the only financial outlay was for the live drum tracks and the mastering. All of mine and Kevan’s time was free because we do it for the love of the project and because we have no choice!