[10-Jun-07] Strings in Prague

Everyone else seemed to be doing it, so we decided it was time we gave it a go too. Actually, it's more complicated than that (anyone who knows us nknows that crowd following is not our thing), but the long and short of it is that our new album will feature a strings by the Czech TV orchestra! www.musictv.cz

It's not a glamorous as it sounds - none of us actually got to go to Prague. With the wonders of modern technolgy, our engineers in the UK pressed a few bottons and sent them sone files; they read the music from the score emailed to them by Craig, our producer; they recorded it; their enigneer pressed a few more buttons and probably twiddled a few knobs; sent it back to us and hey presto!

It was probably more complicated than that, but I'm a singer, what do I know?! One thing I do know is that it sounds awesome and I can't wait for you to hear it. But you're going to have to hang on 'til 15th September, like everyone else.

The eagle-eyed, well-travelled pastoral musicians among you will spot the Marty Haugen and David Haas look-alikes in the photo of the string section.

[Jo]

view: Age to Age studio pics

[10-May-07] Blown Away!

It's time to get the ear plugs out because today's the day the horn section are in the studio. Let me introduce you...

Mike Haughton (see entry below) is playing Alto/Tenor Sax while our Trumpeters are Gary Bell and Antony Socci. You may remember Gary and Antony from the Love in the Air Christmas Concerts at the Adrian Boult Hall. Or perhaps you remember seeing Antony carrying his trumpet around Lourdes and playing an awesome trumpet duet during the International Mass in the Underground Basilica in 2006.

Our trombonist, Stuart Haugh has also played with us previously at our Christmas Concerts and in our Born For This orchestra. I am a little disappointed though, as none of them are wearing sunglasses which I thought was obligatory for a horn section (Although Tony is doing a nice line in hats these days!)

Without giving too much away, one of the tracks the horn section feature heavily on is a calypso version of 'Sweet Heart of Jesus' so we took the unprecedented decision to fly them to the Caribbean in order to get a real feel for what they were being asked to do!! (Courtesy of that well-known airline, Adobe Photoshop ;o)

[mike]

[10-May-07] Blowin' in the Wind

The weather doesn't seem to know what to do at the moment - April showers assail us at a moments notice (someone should tell the weather it's now May!!) and the wind is whipping round the car park here at Mad Hat Studios. The "wind" is also being recorded inside the studio as Mike Haughton has joined us to put some flute and saxophone overdubs onto some of the track for the album.

Aussie-born Mike studied jazz at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and then spent a study period in New York. He has lived in the UK for many years and has a prolific career as a freelance player which has included many West End shows. He has played regularly for Iona, Cliff Richard, Martyn Joseph, Adrian Snell and Graham Kendrick to name-drop but a few!

Now here's random trivia question for you - which other two Iona musicians have played on Boyce & Stanley recordings? Answers on a postcard please...

Apart from being a great player, Mike is a really friendly and down-to-earth guy - even though he is, of course, from the opposite side of the earth altogether!

[mike]

[01-May-07] Plainchant meets rock 'n' roll

Don't panic, we're not talking about any of the arrangements on the new album, but the rather surreal experience of recording the beautiful plainchant setting of "Salve Regina", while just yards away in an adjacent building, veteran rock band Magnum are rehearsing for their upcoming 19-date European Tour!

It is a humorous but poignant reminder of just how counter-cultural what we do as singer/songwriters and music ministers is. Magnum have been to the dizzy heights of number 29 in the UK album chart with their latest album, Princess Alice & The Broken Arrow. We'll be fortunate to make it into a bargain bin at Woolworth's with ours, never mind making it into the top 40!

Although thousands will hopefully hear and enjoy this album when we have finished making it, it will probably never be front page news in anything but our diocesan newspaper, and it will certainly never make it onto a Radio 1 playlist.

But long after the top 40 hits of today are forgotten, these songs - maybe not our versions of them, but these song nonetheless - will still be etched on the lips and hearts of faithful generations of the church. Now that's what I call rock 'n' roll.

[jo]

[23-Jan-07] Getting good vibes

Day 22 in the big brother studio and fortunately there were no emergency evictions overnight, we're definitely getting the vibes though… or perhaps that's because Craig scored a part 'in his sleep' for Simone to play on the Vibraphone!

Apparently percussion instruments are very susceptible to the cold, so we're having to keep temperatures in the 'live room' set to tropical! We think it's just an elaborate ploy to keep the percussionist warm during recording. Maybe acoustic guitars should be afforded the same privileges. Hey ho, another 12 tracks of percussion to go...

[mike]

[22-Jan-07] Is it raining?

Day 21 in the big brother studio.

It sounds like its raining inside at the moment… no, its not the sound of precipitation on the roof - its Simone Rebello adding rain stick to one of the more up-tempo album tracks.

As well as doing lots of solo work, Simone is a member of Backbeat, the award-winning British Percussion Quartet who have performed throughout the UK and have traveled to countries such as Zimbabwe, USA, Switzerland, and Japan to entertain audiences with their 'imaginative programmes that resist categorisation.'

I think this means that what Simone can't do with a shaky avocado isn't worth knowing about.

It's all getting very exciting…

[mike]

[10-Jan-07] It's All Gone Mad...!

Not literally, you understand. But our engineer at The Building has gone snow-boarding in France so we are into the second phase of recording on the new album at a new location. We're back at Mad Hat Studios in Wolverhampton where we recorded some of the tracks for Before the Lord a few years ago.

It's great to be working with the engineering team of Mark Stuart and Sheena Sear again. We've got a couple of new musicians in here with us too. Carl Stanbridge on bass and Jon Howells on drums - both of whom have played in various bands with Craig before.

Jon is wearing the most amazing socks - designed to co-ordinate with his interestingly-coloured industrial-style headphones. And Carl has just described himself as the "Mary Poppins" of bass playing! I'm not sure what he means by that but I can't help but wonder if he has somehow, magically managed to get his five-string bass guitar to fit in a Sainsbury's shopping bag!

Jo and I are relegated to catering duties for the moment (Craig says it's actually a promotion. I say we need a new producer!!), although an executive producer is never without a comment or two to throw a spanner in the works; Like... "nope, don't really like that chord there". Or... "can you re-arrange that entire verse please?" Or... "any chance we could try a different key?"

So, after quite a few weeks of a lull we are all set for days and days of studio time over the coming months. It's an exciting time and the anticipation of the end result is almost unbearable already.

If only we could squeeze the remaining studio days into Carl's Mary Poppins bag, we could have the album finished by next week!!

[mike]

[11-Sep-06] 9/11... In the studio again

Everyone remembers where they were when the news of the attack on the Twin Towers reached them. We were in a recording studio in Oxford working on our Christmas album, The Promise.

Partway through the raucous satirical track "I Want" our engineer, Steve, received a call from a friend telling him to put the TV on. The the four of us - Steve, Mike, our producer craig and I - stood transfixed and dumbfounded as the horror of it all unfolded before us.

Eventually - hours later, it seemed - we turned the TV off, prayed together and recorded and acoustic version of "Silent Night" that became the penultimate track on the album. The words "sleep in heavenly peace" took on a new meaning that day.

We found out later that Craig lost his closest school friend, Rob in the North Tower, and the memory of it all is very much with him today as we are in the studio together again, five years on.

As many in the world stop to remember those who lost their lives that day, we are singing the words from Isaiah "If you stand before the power of hell and death is at your side, know that I am with you through it all"

It is hard to see where God is in it all sometimes. But in hope and faith you have to just step up to the microphone and deliver another vocal take - even when there are tears in your eyes.

[Jo]

[31-Jul-06] Age to Age Studio Diary - WEEK 1

It's not really the first day of work on this new album. We've already done hours and hours of planning and pre-production with our producer, Craig Mcleish. But this is the first week (of many to come) in the light-deprived control room of The Building recording studio. It's proving already to be an ideal environment for this project...

After watching Sting's All This Time DVD and the featured recording sessions with his band at his fabulous Tuscan villa, I have secretly dreamt of being able to record and create in such an environment - a fully equipped and spacious recording studio plus all the comforts of home.

We're not in Tuscany - we're in Stafford! But there is a sitting room, a fully equipped (and relatively clean) kitchen, as well as a dormitory that's been home to Craig and various session musicians over the past few days. We've had real food (with real gravy!) and been able to glimpse daylight at regular intervals. Tim the studio owner and Steve, the in-house engineer, are great guys to work with and there is a real spirit of "creative community" in the place. A blessing.

We've spent the last few days laying down bass and drum tracks and the songs are really starting to come together. Both Mike and I have so many memories and faith experiences tied up in these songs and we know the same will be true for many who will eventually get to listen to this album.

Now that most of the arrangements are committed to hard-disk there is no going back, so our hope and prayer is that we are on the right track and can really do these great tunes justice.

We'll just have to wait and see...

[Jo]