Coldplay – Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends

Released in 2008, this is the album that made my work renowned around the world.

I’m aware that it may sound rather pompous and arrogant to say this… but I have to admit that since then my career as string arranger and producer has been really taking off in a big way.

And this is all thanks to Chris, Jonny, Guy, Will and Phil, who welcomed me into their Coldplay’s world in such an open and trustful way, that I’m still so grateful for how it all went.

This has been my very first big collaboration with an artist of the caliber of Coldplay in such a deep and involved manner.

I remember visiting The Bakery with Guy back in September 2006, when the studio was still under construction. That was the time I met with the band’s engineer Rik Simpson for the first time. Rik later became one of the producers of the album alongside Markus Dravs and Brian Eno.

In November 2006 we started working full-time on demos, for a period that was going to last three months with virtually no breaks. Just a few weeks in and Eno joined us, bringing with him a couple of extra players, one of them being Jon Hopkins, who was going to be with myself one of the main ‘external’ collaborators of the album.

A year and a half later the work was done, after countless sessions and after recording more than 30 or 40 songs??? (I honestly can’t remember).

Ten made it to the album and my work was featured on six of them. These were Life In Technicolor, 42, Yes, Viva La Vida, Violet Hill and Strawberry Swing.

Jon Hopkins – Insides

Jon Hopkins is an amazing pianist, producer, composer, dj, electronica artist… you name it… he is!

I met him at The Bakery, Coldplay‘s studio in London, at the end of 2006. He was brought in by Brian Eno to become a key element for the sound of Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends.

Our ‘collaboration’ began I would say as the two of us were just fiddling about in the Bakery’s live room, Jon with his keyboard and me with my violectra, while the band was talking with Brian in the mixer room.

Chris heard what we were doing and basically asked us to keep going and started recording.

That improvisation became the intro for Violet Hill, first single of the album.

During the summer of 2007 I would visit Jon at his studio in Hackney, to do ‘our’ thing, while the boys were working at Air and there was not a room left in the building for me and Jon to mess about.

In one of these occasions, it was recorded what then became a very gentle but beautiful violin line for Vessel, one of the songs of his new album Insides.

In December 2008, Jon asked me to join him on stage at the O2 Arena to support Coldplay for their three sold out concerts in London.

We repeated that slot, supporting them in Japan in February 2009.

Nowadays we play together from time to time, for some of his most important live gigs.

Coldplay – Prospekt’s March

Prospekts March is an EP that Coldplay released as a result of a very productive one and half year work for the album Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends.

Basically the songs present in this EP are ‘some’ of the ones that didn’t make it to the album.

In this EP I am featured in three tracks: Life In Technicolor II, Rainy Day and Prospekt’s March.

Siouxie – Mantaray

This record was made in between the never ending Coldplay‘s session, from the end of 2006 until 2007 and released eventually in September 2007.

My very good friend Charlie Jones, bass player in Goldfrapp and previously with Robert Plant and Page & Plant for many years, was asked to produce Siouxie first solo album after we both finished the Supernature‘s tour with Goldfrapp in October 2006.

Charlie called me to do two string arrangements for this album, which were featured on If It Doesn’t Kill You and Sea Of Tranquillity.

Röyksopp – Junior

I always feel that I owe to any artist I work with something specific. In the case of Röyksopp I really owe them the fact that they pushed me to start working on my own doing string arrangements in the privacy of my studio and not relying on any assistance and or technical support.

This was due to the fact that because of time issues there was just no chance for me to travel to Norway to work with them.

Throughout the whole session, which lasted several months, I never met the boys, but had the most inspiring phone calls with Tørbjorn, after sending him files to get some feedback.

This was in between Coldplay‘s studio times by the way and it helped me enormously to develop a technique for recording strings which I then used very successfully for Viva La Vida.

My contribution to Junior? Four tracks: The Girl And The Robot, Röyksopp Forever, You Don’t Have A Clue and Silver Cruiser.