What's going on?

Time for a mini update folks. Plenty to write home about from Hi-Sonorous HQ. First up, some of you may remember a few weeks back we linked you to this video. Well the man behind it all, our good friend and fellow producer Mr Gregory Felton organised a hip-hop orchestra show featuring Tommy Eye yesterday in Southampton. Which basically was amazing. [I wanna say it rocked, but that would be imprecise stylistically. Sadly there's no urban equivalent I can think of right now. At least not positive equivalents... Hm, significant?]

Tommy Eye made his best effort at getting the west quay shopping zombies to remember that life exists beyond retail, and a good few hundred were reminded and all the more healthier for it. Big up to G Funk for an amazing job...too cool.

Back in the studio, we've been writing a good deal of worship stuff for a future hip-hop project (Yes, I did just use the words worship and hip-hop in the same sentence) which is turning out to be a huge challenge, but one we are totally pumped about. We're also writing for this guy, and this guy, and this guy. (ok that last one is...let's say, aspirational.)

Sanj has been on particularly fine form on the beats and I've been jangling the guitar strings in between hourly sittings of this...

Sorry, that had to go on the page, I love it so much.

I'm generally finding the ebb and flow to be a little unorthodox. Staying creative is a discipline in itself. One it takes to time to learn. I'm realising more and more that you don't always just instinctively do great things. More often than not, you work for them. I sat in my snug (my house is too small for a lounge) on Friday for an hour and a half and produced two lines of lyrics.

So working is sitting and thinking. And it's an incredibly intense process sometimes. Always, always, always, lyrics come last after chords and melody. I wish it were the other way round, but the others are a piece of cake to me and words are nearly always a slog to the finish. I can sit in complete silence for a while, perhaps 10-15 minutes and just churn rhymes and ideas, ways of sayings things over and over, and get increasingly more impatient with myself. Sometimes the wall comes down before I pull myself out, and then the confidence is too low to carry on. But if not, eventually I just start to strum the chords and sing all vowels on the tune I have. And it's in this kind of spontaneous speaking tongues moment where I might randomly pull out a word or a phrase or occasionally even a whole line and it just fits and feels good, and right. Sometimes it's very closely related to the ideas that I've just been chewing on, and sometimes it's totally different. But what does seem consistent is the feeling that it's a process I have little control over, which is both exhilarating when I hit on things I think are good, but frustratingwhen I can't just get something out. It certainly increases my envy of artists like Tommy, when they freestyle all these complex rhymes and meaning and humour just totally off-the-cuff...

Anyway I said this would be mini. And now it's not.

Chris

Ps. Also shout out to the tireless independent music promoter Nick Tann who played us on his podcast show "Is this Thing On?" this week.