Revisiting old and reinventing new

It's all go again in Hi-Sonorous land! I'm sitting on my sofa watching U2 and reflecting on an enjoyable week starting two new records. Pre-production can be a lot of fun and I realised that this week as myself and Sanj hung out first with Alun Leppitt (the first of our recording artists) making noise and re-imagining Alun's songs, and later on our own, noodling with ideas for our own tunes and getting ready to begin recording for real next week with the legend that is Alan Sampson.

So it's two Al's and two albums, and I'm well excited to see what happens over the next month or so.

In other news, I've been sneaking a few peeks at the above and really enjoying the brilliant way they segue from 70's Police-styled retro groove to a great 'current' surging chorus. And his voice really is something.

Current - it's a word we're throwing around a lot at the moment - trying to find the melodies, sounds, beats, chords that feel of now. As I think about it, I'm beginning to fear that we're not too good at working out what is 'current' right now. But we seem to be getting better, faster and more effective at creating. And this seems to be true for the guys we're working with creatively as well.

And, I've said this before, but I really think the genus of 'current' is just you being the most you you can be. Maybe I've never said it that ineloquently before but you get my meaning. I think the past few months Sanj and I have been discovering more of how you do this, for yourself, and (as with producing) do this for others. The tunes are coming out bolder, more individual and more polished than ever before and that does give me confidence.

But it's not all instinct: there's a fair amount of analytical cut and paste that goes on throughout. We jammed out a cool hip-hop groove as a new possible direction for an old tune we're going to revisit for our record, but listening back there was this really clichéd chord turn-around that had felt great at the time but really dated the sound on second listen. It's funny, because anything that becomes retro surely starts out being dated and then becomes cool again. And it takes someone with enough confidence in its greatness to defy the notion of 'current' in order to make it cool again. Take the 80's!! (To be honest, I'm not even sure that has become cool again, but that kind of wrecks my point...). Anyway maybe my Bflat9 will stay in after all...or maybe it's just cheese. Time will tell I guess.

Anyway, this was the sound of me coming up for air, blathering on and on, before diving into the next vat of creative soup (or, in more familiar terms...Slough).

Icelandic blessings!

C

Ps. Bit disappointed by Mumford. Finally got new Sigur Ros album and loving it. Excited about this. And really want to hear this.

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A great day!

Had an amazing day today in the studio with Myles, Alan, Phil OS, Raksha and Daniel. Some of us just met for the first time, but I think by the time i left at 5 we had around 5 new songs written, so there was definitely something special going on.

The vibe is basically hip-hop/pop worship music and it's all about rap hooks, MPCs and fresh sounds. It's weird to realise in a way that there's basically no precedent for this, or at least not one that's been generally accepted by the mainstream church. But we've already found a wealth of ideas and plenty of common ground stylistically on which to build.

The vision is loose right now, but we're pumped about it nevertheless. I really think it's fascinating to explore an ancient tradition with fresh sounds and approaches. You realise that as much as we say it's not about genre, inevitably, the style has a huge impact on what happens, the way people receive what happens and how their attitudes are shaped by it all. I'm hopeful that we might discover some new things through this exploration, but it's very much a case of seeing how this evolves and takes shape over the coming weeks and months.

Exciting times!


Chris

Elusive songs

OK so I'm pretty excited currently about what's happening in Hi-Sonorous land. We had a great week last week. Worked on some new Tommy Eye tunes which are sounding amazing. Arranged some string parts. Chewed the fat with old friends over the bank holiday.

Also, we met up with Myles Dhillon and Alan Sampson in London on Wednesday and saw/heard the amazing work both of them are doing, musically and other. Got really inspired by them. It turns out we're all basically on the same page in wanting to do something together, so later on this week we'll be adjourning at the Squares to find out what that something sounds like.

At the risk of getting ahead of ourselves, we're also thinking about some filming as well, and the ideas are coming thick and fast. In many ways, so many of the usual things that scupper ideas like this are in place, or aren't issues. Like finances, space, equipment, time. What it comes down to are the songs, and the people. These are the two biggest factors in determining whether any of this is a success or not. And interestingly they're the things you can't really control.

Song writing is tough because it's so elusive. You can learn the craft, but you can't learn to control the creativity. Not really. The essence of a song, the bit that feels magical, the bit that makes you go "yes" is never something a writer can claim ownership of. It's a gift that's imparted - a seed that's sown in you, the writer, by something, or someone else. I like to think it's a bit of heaven on earth.

It's still a mystery to me. Which makes a deadline a very scary thing indeed. In fact a deadline is the sort of thing that is very likely to produce very mediocre, uninspired "craft" from a writer, rather than a bit of real magic.

Anyway, Friday is when all of this comes together, and by then we need to have some songs worth working on. So my thought for today is going to be to reflect on the best piece of song-writing advice I ever had, which actually did not come from another songwriter, but from an activist and political advisor called Jim Wallis, who said "if you want to tell the story, you have to be in it".