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.
The Verve – Forth
The genesis of my collaboration with The Verve is signified by a casual meeting with Nick McCabe in February 2008 outside the Britannia Row Studios in South London. Little I knew at the time that this was going to be the beginning not only of a great musical adventure but also of a great friendship.
Nick was doing some rough mixes, I believe, for the Verve’s new album to be (title-less at the time and later called Forth as everyone obviously knows). I was there producing a band called Hana-b.
If I remember well the conversation started with me complaining about a guitar amp I just bought and ended up with him mentioning that he was looking for some cello player for a song they were working on (I See Houses).
I said that I didn’t play cello but with my Violectra I could do a cello and more if he wanted to. On March 5th, after a gig with Goldfrapp at the Union Chapel I went down to Richmond where they were recording.
There I met Tim Bran, Chris Potter and later Richard (Ashcroft) came down the studio as well.
As soon as we opened the first track, I realized something special was actually happening. To me it was just amazing, this was the band I’ve been waiting to meet all my life. It’s a little difficult to explain and I mean no disrespect to all the wonderful artists I’ve been working and I’m working with still, but there it was… clear as a glass of water!
It was a wonderful session, I was supposed to try out a couple of tunes and instead ended up knocking about six whole tracks until about 3.00am.
I will always remember that day, with Richard singing to me as I was playing on Sit And Wonder and by the end of it feeling dazed, as a result of a truly spiritual experience… oh well, whatever that means…
After a couple of months I completed what I started on that session in my own studio and the result was a contribution to six tracks: the already mentioned Sit And Wonder and I See Houses and also Love Is Noise, Rather Be, Judas and Valium Skies.
And of course I had the honor to join the band on stage during some of their summer festivals gigs, headlining Glastonbury, the V Festivals, the Summercase Festivals in Spain and some other tv and radio appearances in the UK.
Röyksopp – The Girl And The Robot (Suite For A Robotic Girl) re-interpretation
This was my very first attempt to do a ‘classical’ version of a pop song.
I always had this idea in my mind to do ‘something like that’, but never really took it seriously until I started talking about it with Svein and Tørbjorn, as we were working on a very early version of the song.
In this respect I’m grateful to the boys for giving me such an opportunity, unwillingly perhaps, but just the right kind of kick I needed at the time.
And of course I’m also chuffed by the way they featured this remake in their website.