Alison Burns and Martin Taylor discuss the making of their new album

Tindle News

Watch Alison Burns and Martin Taylor discuss the making of their new album - Tindle News on Dailymotion

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00:00I think initially we had a theme, a theme for the album. It was looking through a collection

00:24of songs that I've really always wanted to record. It became apparent that there was

00:31a connection, and it must have been a subconscious connection for me, that there was a connection

00:36between all these songs. I thought, there's a thread here. What is the red thread? Actually,

00:40the red thread turned out to be a green thread. It was a thread of nature was connecting.

00:45It must have been a subconscious thing or something, because we both love nature and

00:51we're both being out in nature. This connection was being made somewhere inside my thought

00:58process, that all these songs became, they were all connected. I thought the theme that's standing

01:05out here is, these are all songs clearly with a theme for nature. That became, this is good,

01:11this feels right. Thinking about a title for the album as well, we had all sorts of connotations

01:18there, but a simple title, which came later once we'd done the recording, obviously thinking about

01:25what we were recording and the feel of what we were producing at the time. There's something

01:30really magical and special about Allaire Studios in Glentonge near Shokan, where we recorded. We

01:38drove up to the top of this mountain and drove through this archway. When we walked into the

01:45studio, there was just some magic happening in there. We're both very familiar with the Catskill

01:51Mountains in upstate New York. Anyway, we often work there and it does have that magic. There's

01:58a creativity there, but that seemed to be like we'd climbed Everest of that magic creativity

02:05being there. You couldn't not be creative there, could you? It was incredible. I felt a real

02:13connection with the place and I know I'll be back. I will absolutely be back there. Looking

02:19out through those huge panoramic windows to the, I think it's the Shokan Reservoir below and singing

02:29songs and playing music that was completely connecting with the surroundings was absolutely

02:37magical and special. I don't know how we would ever create that again because every moment in

02:42time felt different on each day. There's something as well, where you go to places, I'm thinking of

02:49somewhere like Abbey Road Studios, where the Beatles record and many, many other wonderful

02:55music's been created in that big room as well. I've worked there quite a number of times over

03:01the years. The building soaks up that music and I felt that when we were there at Allaire. David

03:08Bowie worked there a lot and recorded a lot, Nora Jones. Some really magical music happened there

03:14and you get that feeling of it and it can't help but inspire you. There's a really good energy

03:21there. I feel like lots of musicians have had happy times there. It felt like a positive space to

03:28create music. Also, I mean really, we have to give a lot of credit to the people that worked

03:36with us on it to make it happen. We had a wonderful sound engineer. Yeah, John Valacio.

03:42He was wonderful. He was great because he just sat there very quiet. You just knew this guy

03:50really knew what he was doing. He very rarely said anything, but when he did, it was always

03:56something very, very constructive and you just knew you were in safe hands. Yeah, and Randall Wallace,

04:06who owns the studio, he was just so welcoming and he couldn't be more helpful with the classical

04:14guitars. He gave us a tour of the studio and I remember he took us down and John took us down

04:20to the reverb plate and I'd never seen anything like that in my life. It was huge. So just knowing

04:27that that was the reverb plate for the recordings. Old-fashioned way of doing it. Yeah, it's just

04:33incredible. And of course, we had our mixing engineer, Dave O'Donnell, who, he came to the

04:40studio, we were, I think we were only our second day in or something and we'd, we were actually

04:45making good progress because everything was clicking, everything was gelling. Our performances,

04:51we were ready to perform, I think, and we'd already recorded I've Got the World on a String

04:56and I watched him, we were playing obviously the rough, it was nothing had been, there was no sparkle

05:01on it, it was just the raw file, the raw recordings there and he stood there with his eyes closed

05:07and I thought, he's already working on it, he's working on it right now, I can see it.

05:13And then we all had a very enjoyable lunch together and we chatted and yeah, we totally,

05:19you know, we all clicked. So it was a fantastic teamwork. Yeah. So throughout the whole recording

05:27process, but also the pre-production and pre-, you know, when we were establishing everything

05:33that was going to happen, our producer, James Taylor, stepped in, your son, my husband, who did

05:38an amazing job at sourcing the studio, helping to shape the list of songs that we were going to

05:45record and some possible songs, some songs that made it, that definitely made it into the album,

05:51but some that were potential ones that didn't. When you get into the studio though, there's,

05:56we don't have too much time for experimentation because, unlike these big recording projects,

06:02we kind of, we went in there and we recorded the whole album in five days. In fact, we had some

06:07time to spare at the end, so I think we were, we did a great job in terms of that because.

06:13And that included some of the overdubs I was doing as well, so it wasn't all in real time.

06:17So exactly, and so we had a little bit of time at the end just to listen to the tracks and maybe

06:23go back and do something or redo a vocal or something, but we didn't do too much of that.

06:28It was all pretty much in the performances that we captured. On the production side,

06:35as a producer, James did a fantastic job at getting the studio, the engineer, the mixing

06:43engineer, Dave O'Donnell, and also as well organising the mastering, which we did in

06:50Air Studios, the famous Air Studios in Hampstead in London. And our mastering engineer was Cicely

06:57Ballston. Great to be in the room watching her work and see everything being finalised.

07:05Yeah, so even though it's a duo recording, you and me, we're kind of the little tip of the iceberg.

07:12We are.

07:13You know, we had, you know, the best people that we could possibly be working with.

07:17And what about all your microphones?

07:19Oh, the microphones were amazing. I think that maybe warrants a separate one, because

07:24off the top of my head, I can't remember the names of them, but one of the microphones that I used

07:29was the same make and model. I think it was called the skunk microphone. The very same model that

07:36Peggy Lee used to record The Folks Who Live on the Hill. And there I was recording The Folks

07:43Who Live on the Hill with the exact same model of microphone. It doesn't get any better than that.

07:47And obviously it just sounded incredible.

07:50The sound was wonderful, wasn't it?

07:52Yeah.

07:52Yeah. I always find that when I'm going into a project,

07:56one of the worst things I can do is actually plan things too much. So I'm going to do this,

08:01I'm going to do that, I'm going to play this guitar, I'm going to do these little things I'm

08:05going to do. Because it's almost as if you need to go into your environment where you're going to be,

08:11as we did in the Aaliyah studios. And then something else happens, there's all the other

08:17outside influences that come with that. And I certainly felt that just really when we walked

08:24into the studio, there was an incredible atmosphere because of where we were. The

08:31amazing outlook from the studio, which you're not looking out on anything usually in the studio,

08:36is all these walls. We started to play and I was playing this guitar. And at one point I thought,

08:42I need to play a nylon string guitar on some of this. I could just hear it.

08:48And I have a very good classical guitar at home, which I didn't have with me. So the owner of the

08:55studio, Randall Wallace, has an amazing collection of every kind of musical instrument you can

09:01imagine. So I mentioned it to him. He appeared with a Rubio and Ramirez guitar, like really

09:09top classical guitars. He said, yeah, play whichever one you want. And I chose the Rubio

09:14in the end. But that wasn't my plan. I wasn't going to play a nylon string guitar. So that

09:20came about, that brought a colour and a texture to it that I hadn't planned to do. And then it became

09:27very much part of the recording. It did. And then when we moved on to actually making the

09:33final product, the album itself, the hard copy CD and the artwork, we had an art photographer

09:41called Bella Kotak, who did some photography for us to create the album cover art. And then the

09:48designers were in Scotland, Scott Witham at Traffic. So we've had an amazing team that has

09:55taken the kernel of an idea right through to the finished product. But not forgetting our amazing

10:02videographer and filmmaker, Patrick Rooney, who has been on this journey with us right the way

10:09through in relation to how we present the songs to the public and the videos. So we've got two

10:15amazing videos for the first two singles. The footage is beautiful. Yeah. Nature Boy and The

10:20Gentle Rain. The videos are just incredible. We've had some amazing feedback on those. So

10:25what a team. What an incredible team. We did it. We did it. We got there. We started well,

10:30we ended well and we looked the middle. We worked really hard in the middle as well.

10:34Maurice Chevalier. Yeah. Well, I hope you've enjoyed the background to the whole album and

10:39our creative process and how we've got from an idea to a finished product. So we'd love if you

10:44went and had a listen to Songs for Nature. You can order online and listen on Spotify or wherever

10:50you listen to your music. It's out there.

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