What are your memories of your first album, “Plays Genesis and Other Original Stuff”?
Those were exciting times as I was preparing for my first release. Putting the record out it made me a bit nervous as I knew people would start immediately to make comparisons, that’s why the album wasn’t all just Genesis covers but other material done more or less with a “Genesis” sound in mind. Although I even got some praises from Steve Hackett himself, some reviews were mixed. I learned that doing covers can be tricky if you are not an established name. But in the end, I was pleased with the result enough to follow the album with an EP that included another Genesis song.
You have recorded with an impressive list of musicians, such as Rick Wakeman, Bill Bruford, etc. What has been your overall experience with these collaborations?
Personally, it has been like a dream come true. These musicians are not only unbelievably talented but they are also mine and many a musician’s heroes. It’s like paying basketball with Michael Jordan or racing alongside Lewis Hamilton. Their contributions have helped immensely in elevating my music and you can’t help but learn from these guys along the way. I would say that the overall experience has been a great one.
What is your best and worst experience collaborating with a famous musician?
I don’t have a “worst” experience per se, they all have been great but if I really, really enjoyed working with Trey Gunn (ex-King Crimson). He’s extremely professional and always goes the extra mile to get the product to be right. One of my top favorite pieces of mine is called Blood Like Red. It is one of those pieces where you can hear something new with every listen. we kicked that one around a bit after it started as a completely different piece. The end result I just love. That was a fun and great experience that ended up being very rewarding.
What was your inspiration for the album “Charging The Electric Dream” ?
The album is composed of pieces that I call “orphans” because they were recorded with no specific purpose in mind. Every so often I just start something just when I feel the bug to record something. Often you do some demo stuff and then get other musicians to do their parts on it. For these pieces it’s just me which always seem to gravitate towards a more electronic sound. If I were to really pit an inspiration to it, I would say that there are definitely touches of Tangerine Dreams, Vangelis, Brian Eno, Jean-Michel Jarre and of course, Rick Wakeman. I also get some inspiration from classical music.
You have described your album as “a soundtrack that stimulates the listener’s imagination.” What would be the perfect movie for this soundtrack?
Don’t really know other than something in science fiction. I do have weird thoughts of a visualizing dystopian future when doing music. And I mean dystopian because it is more dramatic and I believe in delivering a certain level of drama through music. Also, there’s something about the sound of synthesizers that reverberate a “futuristic setting”.
When and how did you record your new album?
The idea of Charging The electric Dream as an album started sometime last year. I was working on another project but had to put it on hiatus it for a bit while some of the musicians working with me went on tour. In that period of time, I recorded two pieces which I felt would not fit into the project we were working on. The pieces ended up being the first and last pieces on the new album. I though to go back into my personal catalogue and find other pieces as well to see if I had enough material to put a whole album together. I revisited pieces that I had done over the years that carried a somewhat similar sound. Pieces that I had always some affinity for but never found the right vehicle to release them. Some of the music in the album date back to the year 2000, (more or less). I found that I had lost some of the multi-tracks to some of the pieces which meant that some of the songs are as they originally were. I used two sound engineers to make the whole thing sonically cohesive. John Douglass who was brought in to do some “cleanup” on some of the older tracks. He took care of things like unwanted clicks, pops and the such. Then I worked with Mao Appelbaum who came originally recommended by Billy Sherwood. He ensured that the overall sound between of the album held up together as one piece of work. For the music that I did have multi-tracks for, I recorded some new parts and did some editing to bring some freshness into them.
The music influences of your album refer to electronic and Ambient music artists, how do you think that electronic music could augment your composing style?
I see my musical output as what’s left behind as I travel through the adventure. Every album has some new twists and some are vastly different form one to the next. The main thematic here seems to be that it is by far mostly instrumental music. A big part of that is the way I personally assimilate music. I like the emotions that certain instruments and textures bring just by the way they sound within a piece of music. I tend to have lots of subtle esoteric textures within my music which is something I guess I “borrowed” from some of the well known electronic and ambient music artists. Tangerine Dreams has always created music that I felt was somewhat ahead of the curve and they have always been an inspiration to me.
Do you use physical or digital musical instruments for your recordings, and how does this usage affect the audio quality of the final result?
I use both relying a bit more on the digital side. Sometime ago a hurricane hit our city and the ensuing flood put about five feet of water inside my house for about 12 days. We lost everything including all of my instruments and recording equipment. I rebuilt my home studio since which is where the bulk of the recordings happen. This time around I went with more digital equipment than ever just as an economic measure. However, I am very pleased not only with the flexibility of the workflow but also some of the emulated software-based synths which are incredible. I never had the opportunity to own a real ARP 2600 for example, but I love my VST version of it and I used it heavily for this album.
What is your opinion about the current Prog scene?
There are a lot of talented people creating all sorts of music out there. My years of listening to music heavily are more in the past. It doesn’t mean that I never listen to any music but I really not listen to much these days. When I do it may be prog or it may be something labeled differently. When I first heard of Radiohead I really liked them, the same goes for the french band Air. But I couldn’t really tell you much about current music because I simply don’t know much about it myself. Porcupine Tree seems to be really popular but for my taste I find them a bit too busy at times. I am sure there are songs from them that I would like but what I have heard so far is not really my cup of tea as they say.
What are your next music plans?
I am in the middle of working on two projects, one is inspired by the music of Pink Floyd. They have been a huge influence in my life and regardless of their current bickering and political ideologies by certain ex-members, their musical legacy is amazing. if I were stranded on one island and could only have one album with me, it most likely be a Pink Floyd album, either the Dark Side Of the Moon, Wish You Were Here or Animals. All brilliant albums. My plan is to release that project sometime this year. It is original music but certainly inspired by the Floyd’s output. This project does include other musicians so there are always having to work around schedules and that sort of thing. We got Tony Franklin who used to play with Jimmy Page on The Firm dong bass on some songs, Edoardo Scorto and Damian Darlington from Brit Floyd on the bulk of the guitar work and so far we have John Helliwell form Supertramp on saxophone in one of the pieces plus some session classical musicians doing the string section on parts of the album. It is coming along nicely and I think it will be something that fans of Pink Floyd would definitely like. I also have a project that I have been working very slowly with some of the guys from Yes. It has been a while for this one but once I pick it right back up I’ll get the guys back into the fold and hopefully there will be a full album out of it. I see my musical journey as an adventure where I must travel through known paths before trail blazing my own. With every album there’s some acquired knowledge which motivates me to do more. I have also been fortunate to enlist along the way, some of the very people that have inspired me to begin with. That part is like a dream come true. So I suspect that I’ll still have some new approaches to my music for the future.
