The Story Of “Red”

Conceived, recorded and released over three years – from 2017 to 2020 – this album stands as a document of a universal journey.

“I knew from the minute we started that it had to be as good as we could make it- no excuses, no compromises. I also knew that it was going to be challenging- we cover a lot of musical styles within one album, and getting all those different songs to unify and make a complete album was going to be difficult. On top of that, I wanted to have a distinct sound to the music- as far as it was possible I wanted the album to be one of those albums that seemingly comes out of nowhere; one that fits into all genres and none.

Given that, Pete Miles’ presence at the production helm was absolutely indispensable- from minute one, he profoundly understood what it was that was trying to be captured.

It was both remarkably easy and also exceptionally hard to bring together both the deep emotion and the kind of hard-driven focus that made the album a success- avoiding emotion would have made it inauthentic; not focussing hard or with sufficient rigour would have made it messy and unformed.

I can vividly remember listening to the rough mixes of “It’s Summer” while driving to and from work- softly overwhelmed with emotion; not to the point of lacking the ability to function, but more just resting on that emotional cusp- and allowing myself to Feel through it all.

The technical demands of the recording were enough in themselves- moving between several instruments isn’t- in theory- challenging; however, approaching them in the correct mindset could be hard- moving from synth to bass meant a switch from one mindset to the other- not always easy (for me at least- for someone of Prince’s calibre I daresay it’s relatively easy; but not by any stretch of the imagination do I possess that level of skill. Or time to focus).

Also – jumping from the day job (intellectually demanding) to the recording (emotionally demanding) could be exhausting”.

With the benefit of hindsight though…recording “Red” has set things up for the next album…