After completing a first solo album with Hugh Dedication in 1996, I remained especially impressed by Hugh’s extraordinary skill with the nylon strung guitar. (As widely heard on the George Michael ‘Careless whisper’ song.)
The idea for this album was to produce a recording based on ideas improvised on the acoustic guitar. A Mindwash between the courses of other musical styles, or to put it more simply, use high quality microphones to record a high quality guitar performed by a high quality player with a high quality attitude to guitar playing.
Over a one year period Hugh and I would meet over a cappuccino at the Cafe Rouge in Esher, where we would brainstorm an idea before driving down to the studio in Ripley. Once there, with a variety of Hugh’s excellent guitars, and with a selection of fine microphones, we would record hours of improvised parts.
Out of the nine or so hours of material recorded, I edited the best hour in a working context, and this became the album.
The engineer for most of the sessions was Robin Black. The designer was Stuart Catterson.
Highlights of this period for me are hard to specify as working with Hugh is always a pleasure, and being around the sound of such beautiful instruments is never a bad thing. There was a special thrill in hearing Hugh interpret a guitar piece I had written, which appears on the album as ‘Hearts‘.
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