September 2018. It was completely out of the blue. We’d worked together since 1999 with ReGenesis and had recorded a Peter Gabriel tribute album. He’s also featured in some of my solo work and other collaborative work. When I happened to mention the idea of doing a collaborative original music project his reply was “that would be great”. Why hadn’t we done something together before? It seemed so obvious.
He is of course, Doug Melbourne - keyboards man with ReGenesis.
So we decided to give it a shot to see what happened. It was immediate. The melodies were flowing like water. The production ideas were instantaneous. We wanted it to be accessible. We wanted songs. Doug was coming up with ideas like there was no tomorrow. He was on fire! I really wanted to avoid the big soundscape orchestral element with this one and focus on melody and arrangement. However, the string arrangements do creep in a bit on one or two tracks and we even have one instrumental!
Doug had some very strong song ideas and some very interesting subject matter. We’d finished the first song in under a week. There was no stopping us! This was definitely going to work. The songs were coming thick and fast and the whole thing seemed effortless. We were definitely on the same wavelength!
The final song was mixed on 28th February 2019. We were done. We’d completed the album in just a few months and what a journey!
This has been one of the most enjoyable collaborative projects I have ever worked on. I’m very proud of this album and really hope you like it. We do. Very much.
The Divide will be released in June 2019.