The Recycle (From Death Comes Life) is a concept story over 7 parts to which most of its work was done between the last week in July to the first week in September way back in 2012. It's perhaps the most bizarre thing I have ever done in how it actually happened to come about in the first place, and how it came about in the first place was via Jaime contacting me and Vlad back in that last week of July 2012 asking us both if we could do a piece of music or a song for Stefan's Birthday to which both myself and Vlad told her sure.

 

This was back in the last week of July 2012 and we had till the first week in September of that year to get this thing done. Well in reality that task may have been very easy had I just started to do say a 4 or 5 minute song. But the real fact was that I totally lost the plot thinking in the way of going down some Gothic road to which I knew Stefan was into and would of perhaps liked. Not sure if the end result was anything like Gothic Rock or Progressive Rock to be honest and it was just a dark and haunting thing I kicked it off with from the start that led it into some rather strange journey.

 

 

At the end of the day although it has very much taken quite some time to get this piece of work out, and in reality I was rather hoping Stefan could of contributed to it, which is why it very much did take a back seat over these past couple of years. I cannot blame Stefan for holding it back at all, and only blame myself for not doing something with it a long while ago.

 

The fact that I myself get involved in so many other projects can even make me forget other pieces I have done in the past so easily, especially when work as grinded to an halt on it for so long. For me it's always the new thing I am working on that grabs my attention the most. I have a stack of unfinished work that goes back a hell of a lot longer than the work done here, to which I dare say will never see the light of day.

 

It's only from the other members involved in the collaboration who have messaged me asking me when it's going to get done, that really spurns me on to do something more with the piece to try and get it finished.

 

Back in late 2013 well over a year later. I remember Vlad sending me a message asking me what's going on with the piece and is it ever gonna be coming out. It was his message that got me back into writing more words for certain parts, and even working around the lyrics Jaime had sent me for part 2 to which I did rearrange and put in some words of my own, and even recorded myself singing them but did so with the use of my phone. Which is why I sang them again this week using my mic to get a better job done of it.

 

But also because of Vlad's message this also prompted me to get in touch with Mark Bennett to work on some of the parts for me, and even inspired me to get back in touch with Jaime asking her for some tears, which was a most unusual request to ask anybody to do, but she done it perfectly and was just the thing I wanted for part 3.

 

This whole thing came about in reality because of Jaime, so I really wanted her to have more of a part in the project, and as I was working on each part and building it along, I also remembered an haunting piano piece she had done herself a long while back on her cloud entitled "Walking in my Shadow" and thought it would be a great idea use her piece for part 6.

 

The fact that when I changed my haunting story to more along the lines of death and reincarnation still made this piece of hers work, and it was at this stage I added in brackets the words "The Spirit Lives On" to its title to be more fitting in with the new story line.

 

From the very time back in July or around August of 2012. I knew I wanted Mark involved in this project and even told Jaime and Vlad in the discussions we had about it all as work was in progress at the time. It was very much Part 5 Laid To Rest that I knew needed a priest and he would fit the bill perfectly. I had this vision all along with the music I created for that part. I just never had any words at the time. So those words I wrote for the funeral service and sent them over to Mark along with the music for him to recite them for me.

 

I have to say when Mark sent me it back with his recitation over the piece my jaw dropped. He was the most perfect person to do this part and my vision of him playing the part was spot on. I was that exited I sent it to Jaime to have a listen to it, and she even said it was perfect and you could not have asked for anything more.

 

It was at this stage that I knew things were starting to take shape more and further progress was being made. The fact that Mark had done such a brilliant job spurned me on to ask him to do some of the other parts for me.

 

Part 7 was a piece in reality I was going to actual murmur a few words on myself, and my vision was in a Pink Floyd way were they are very hard to hear and only are in the background. But I had no words and at the time was that busy writing lyrics for other songs and collabs I was involved in which very much deterred me from doing so, and prompted me to ask Mark to write the words and recite them in the piece instead.

 

When Mark had done so and sent me what he had done back to me, at first I was not really sure, but this is because I also knew in my mind I wanted guitar for this piece as well, and without that element it was very hard for me to visualise just what Mark had done here, but the words he wrote was really well good I felt, even at first I did think there was far too many of them.

 

I wrote back to Mark telling him my thoughts and he said exactly the same without the guitar it's hard to see if they would work and he told me you do not have to use them all and it was only an idea.

 

After these parts were done from earlier on this year once again the project had grinded to an halt, and it was not until I got a message off Chris Sheri asking me when this collaborative piece was ever gonna get put out last week. I never would have had any intentions of getting the whole thing out for this Halloween, because I had completely forgotten about it all and working on other collabs.

 

Even though Chris was not in the final production I put out on the cloud. I should explain why I decided to leave out some really talented flute playing she had played over part 3 of this project for me.

 

At the time I asked Chris to do this for me, work was very much still in its early stage of progress and development back in August of 2012 and by this stage I had only just done my piano piece which was to become part 3. Around this time I had just heard her recently play some flute over a guitar piece that Derek Cornet had put out on the cloud with her playing this fantastic bit of flute in, to which gave Derek's Guitar this super melancholy feel about the whole piece. It blew my head away and I thought to myself I would like a bit of that over this new piano piece I had just done.

 

So I sent my piano piece to Chris and it never even had Vlad's bass guitar on at the time and that's how early the whole thing was in its stages of work in progress. When Chris sent me the piece back with her super flute over it, I thought it was fantastic and loved it. Chris wanted to put it straight out on her cloud and I had to stop her straight away from doing so.

 

The fact is this whole project was a well kept secret and was meant to be a surprise for Stefan's birthday to which not even I could tell Chris the real reason why she was not allowed to put it out. But I told her it was for a collaborative piece of work with a good few other people involved so she will have to wait.

 

My whole vision from the haunting sort of Gothic start was also to make some ghostly Halloween story and if it had not of been the fact that I changed my idea and the storey as more parts were being done, I would of very much of had her flute in part 3. But as I was now working on the subject of death and reincarnation and entitled part 3 "The Bereavement" I soon noticed her flute made the piece a bit more jolly than sad. So I had to make the decision to take it out.

 

Though I made that decision by the time I had all the 7 parts done back in September of 2012. I did not tell Chris at this point, and it was only when she messaged me last week that made me send her a message back to tell her that her part was not going to be in the final release, and I explained my reasons in detail in that message. Though I only thought it fair to give her the heads up to put the piece out whenever she likes.

 

It took near enough a week for Chris to get back to me, and to be honest I was quite worried especially as it's never easy trying to tell somebody that their part had been dropped. It was far from the case that it was not good enough, because in reality it was fantastic, but not even fantastic would of now fitted that part with the story line being changed.

 

Chris got back to me on the very morning of the release day which was today the 31st, and I was so relieved to see how she accepted it and was totally professional about it all. She even told me she would put the piece out but not yet as she was working on a  new song with Robyn and that was going to be her next release.

 

I have a lot to thank Chris for, because she threw the spark back in me to try and rush and get this out for this Halloween and it was not until this very week I got in touch with Raphael to ask if he could help me out and play some guitar on some of the parts for me. It took some time for him to get back to me as he was busy himself. I finally heard from him on Tuesday and he told me he would have sometime on the Wednesday and see what he could do.

 

I had sent him 4 of the parts which were Parts 1,2,4 & 7 but I should mention here that I only sent him part 4 as an emergency stand by, because my original vision I had for part 4 with its jam was to make it really zany and a ball of a party sort of thing with ghosts and ghouls in it.

 

 

Even down to that fact that my story had changed from a ghostly Halloween story into something more spiritual about reincarnation, the fact that I had named this part "The Embalmer" I still very much wanted that zany zip about it, so I sent it to one of the zaniest freaking guys I had ever heard on Soundcloud and even told Raphael I had done so too.

 

His name is none other than Monk Zylo and for me this part would of been perfect for him to do is mad crazy stuff with it. For those who have never been on Monks cloud I can tell you now this guys work in some ways is like Frank Zappa. He will use drills and god knows what else besides his guitar in his whacky zany creations. The guy is great with mad words too, which was also something I wanted in this part, and he would of been quite capable of even improvising them in his own way as well.  

 

So I sent the piece to him last Sunday asking him if he could do his bizzo on it with his guitars drills and whatever, and to improvise some words around it as in being the embalmer, and some words as an example I suggested in that message that went along the lines of "I'm gonna pump up some stiff tonight and have myself a party".

 

By the time Tuesday came and I got the first reply back from Raphael. I was very much panicking because I had not heard one single Dickey Bird off Monk. So I had no choice the following day to tell Raphael the part was his to throw something on it. I still have not heard anything off Monk either and I dare say I will not either.

 

One of the 4 parts I sent to Raphael I wanted so much some guitar on was Part 2. But I knew it was going to very difficult because in reality Darren's drums were out of time, and even when Raphael heard this part he told me straight he could not work on that part cause his drums very much were so.

 

But I cannot blame Darren at all because he is one great drummer. But when I sent him this piece my vision was to have drums on it like Nick Mason plays on the track "Time" by Pink Floyd with them echoing and played in freestyle and not based on timing at all and more like real-time. Darren had not even heard of the track but tried to do what he could.

 

When I received his drums for this part he was also extremely busy and the drums I had a right game with to be honest, especially the opening cymbals to which he played in a 4/4 time when the piece was in fact very much in real-time and freestyle, so they never sat in at all. But I threw a Doppler on them running at a 3rd of the time coming in and out to defeat his timing, and in the end decided to throw out his cymbals, and for me it still works really great and I am well pleased with them to be honest. Sound wise they are exactly how I wanted them.

 

Darren's drums on part 4 are totally superb and was done much later on as I was progressing along, and you will soon hear what a truly great drummer he really is, and he has truly done a fantastic job for me to which I am well chuffed with.

 

So with Raphael only having one evening to work on the other 3 parts it was also very hard for him to get any clear visualisation for his guitar parts. But my only interest was getting his parts back in time to put this out this Friday on Halloween. If he could not get it done, I very much would of waited another year to put it out.

 

Raphael played the parts and got them to me late on Wednesday evening. He told me it's far from great but I do not have to use them or could just use certain parts if I wanted too. I have to say his guitar work on part 1 even though it was such a short part, was in fact truly amazing and blew me away.

 

The rhythm playing he did for part 4 was fantastic at the start, but he even told me himself that for this part he lost it a bit, and it maybe better not to use all of it.

 

But I soon found by applying various other guitar effects to certain parts of it from one of my guitar racks, it worked really well enough for me to use the whole of it. I even sent it him back to listen to because I know guitarists can be very critical if you mess with their sound, but as he explained to me, it's perhaps a bit false pretence but I could use it like that if I was happy enough with it. I was extremely happy and felt it worked really well.

 

Now for what he did for part 7 was a long way off my visualisation for what the guitar was supposed to be doing. All I wanted in reality was an atmospheric slow guitar sort of like Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd. The fact that this stem was also dry and rather more like a Spanish guitar playing some sort of blistering rondo part, it just did not seem to work for me. He also told me himself it does not really fit with the haunting melody I got, but was all he could think of in so little time, and only use it if necessary.

 

Given the pressure Raphael was under I totally understand how hard this was to get all done in such a short amount of time. It was a lot of work to get through working on all 3 parts and when I first put his guitar stem he sent me for part 7 into the mix, at first it was very much saying to me to leave it out. But once again I started to experiment with my guitar rack of effects and with the use of overdrive and FX completely changed the sound of his guitar.

 

Now Raphael has not heard what I have done with his guitar at all, and he's probably gonna kill me and think it's sacrilege (LOL) But the real fact is that I wanted guitar in this part and had to make a big decision, because without the guitar it would have been put off for another year.

 

It was also during mixing in Raphael's guitar that I also got to mix in Mark's murmuring vocal part and got to hear it for the first time working in this murmuring way.

 

Also this week I sent Mark part 6 to see if he could do anything with that, and told him I was hoping to get this out for this Halloween so I need a rush job.

 

I must admit I was quite surprised to find and email back to me with it done within about an hour later. But the other thing I liked about it was the fact that he had tied it in with the priest from the previous part 5. Which I thought at first it was only a couple of lines and short, but his vision was bloody brilliant and worked great.

 

 I have to say what he did truly worked and his words were bloody great and you will have to read the lyrics to hear what he his saying in part 7, but that's exactly what was intended in the first place for the piece.

 

 

 

There is also 2 parts of this whole piece which are parts 6 & 7 that Vlad reckoned I had not lined his bass stems up right on back in 2012 and was slightly out. Back then I sent him various adjustments to listen to, and he still reckoned they was out.

 

Now with so little time over the last week I was actually going to send him them again to listen to. But never had the time, but I myself spent hours listening to these parts and for the life of me the original line up I had on them in the first place and how his stem lined up in my DAW was perfectly bang on in my book. So I have gone along with that without his permission, and I hope he does not slaughter me for it (LOL)

 

Vlad I can honestly say was a pure work horse on this project from day one, and is in fact the only guy apart from myself who plays on every single part. His work was absolutely outstanding. He can argue with me till the cows come home about the lining up of his stems on those last two parts, but in all honesty they work fantastic, and I genuinely feel they are bang on. I sometime even get the feeling he may of been pissed when I sent them him to hear in the first place (LOL)

 

Part 4 The Embalmer was an original idea of my own to have a jamming session to beef it up a bit. I originally made up this section using drum loops including its stops and played bass terribly over it on my keyboards and sent the piece to Vlad and Darren and asked them if they could replace my bass and drum parts with the genuine thing.

 

When I got back what the both of them had done it blew my head off that much that I only felt it fair to give them both the writing credits for this part. Both Vlad's bass line and Darren's drums totally blew mine out of the ball park, and if you listen to the original demo I sent them here of my terrible bass line played on the keys and with the use of drum loops to which it also even had the organ of my 1st take before playing it again over what the piece the guys sent me.