London / Detroit

During my 35 years of making music I seem to have constantly been searching for new singers and writers to work with. My first productions in the late 80s mainly utilised acapellas from my record collection to provide the vocal element. Finding bits and pieces from different records that worked together harmonically and lyrically was a fun challenge. Back then I bought any vinyl that included an acapella mix. I still have a couple of shelves of them in the record room and they can come in handy from time to time.

The first singer I properly recorded was Debbie French in the very early 90s. She had featured in the background on an indie dance record I signed by Innaworld and really liked her voice so got her number from the band. She most notably sang on Do What You Feel, Love Fantasy and One Kiss. Though she sounded great on it Debbie wasn't crazy about house music. We worked together a few more times but nothing quite had the magic of the first few releases.

A vocal highlight of my career came along in the mid 90s with Thelma Houston. This opportunity was due to a hook up between the guy who owned Unit 3 Studios (where I worked out of) Mike Lentin and Thelma's then manager. What interested the manager was an unrecorded Hal David ballad Mike had found so we arranged a brief UK visit. Though Thelma recorded the ballad the real excitement for me where the 2 uptempo songs we worked on. Hearing Thelma soulfully belting out the ad libs was defo a definitive goosebump moment and my first experience working with an A grade disco diva, shame she lived in LA and the manger wasn't into fruits of the collaboration.

In '96 I got a call from a journalist called Maria Graditsky who had interviewed me a couple of years before and I had mentioned my permanent quest for singers, she told me that she had interviewed Taka Boom (Chaka Khan's sister) and that she had recently relocated to London. As it turned out in West Hampstead, fairly close to my studio. Taka had been a member of Norman Whitfield's psychedelic disco funk act Undisputed Truth as well as a solo artist signed to several majors. This was a very fruitful relationship that began with "Can't Get High Without U". I started off with covers and hooks I had hobbled together myself but after a while I realised Taka was a pretty good writer. Writing songs is an art and totally different skill to singing, not many people are good at both but Taka was. We wrote a few hits together that featured Taka's powerhouse vocals like "Make a move on Me" and "Must Be The Music". Sometimes I'd have the idea for a hook or lyric and we'd develop it into a proper song together. One my faves we did was the more soulful downtempo cut "Everyday". I'm not sure how many songs we recorded but it was a quite a lot.

Around the same time as Taka I met Carolyn Harding, she was coming over to the UK for another session and I did a day with her re-recording her hit "Movin On". Carolyn has a very expressive soulful voice and is a really hard worker in the studio, she is based in New York but she flew over to London a couple more times for working visits and the sessions were always fruitful (Mistura "Think Positive" was a highlight), though as we were on a tight schedule we did more covers.

So far all the vocalists I've mentioned have been ladies. In the early 2000's a DJ I met at a gig called Simon Brown mentioned a singer from Sheffield called Pete Simpson who sang over his sets in clubs who he thought was really good. As well as being a great singer Pete is a lovely humble guy and we started things off on a high when he contributed lead vocals to the Sunburst Band single "Fly Away". We recorded many songs together in the 00's and Pete was lead singer when we took Sunburst live. These days he lives in Vienna and we still speak regularly.

From the first time I heard it I loved Satoshie Tomie's "Inspired" and particularly liked the sultry harmonised vocals. I knew Diane Charlemagne was from Manchester and had been in the 80's soul band 52nd Street. It took me a while to get her contact details and when I did she was on tour with Moby. When we finally did get together we clicked both musically and personally. Dianne had a lovely rich voice and was also a very gifted writer, both melodically and lyrically. Additionally she was great at harmonies and very easy to to record. Between 2007 and 2014 Dianne was a regular visiter to my studio, we wrote and recorded many songs, with my favourites being "Secret Life of Us" and the remake of "Must Be The Music". Sadly Di passed away in 2015 of cancer. I will always regret not recording more songs with her in her final year, as she was diagnosed about 18 months before she actually passed but was still doing sessions for the first year. In retrospect I don't think I actually faced and accepted the reality she was likely to die until it was too late. It's a criminal injustice that Di was working as a security guard for much of the time I knew her because she wasn't making enough out of music.

These days a lot of music is made remotely, its not the way I like to work ideally as I prefer to actually be together in the same room (especially for writing) but it can work on some projects with the right person. The right person for me in recent years has been Angela Johnson. I was a fan of Angela since her days as lead singer in Coolys Hot Box, as well as being a super musical vocalist she is very professional and punctual. Communication is of the upmost importance when working remotely and I don't want to be getting frustrated that I'm chasing someone who promised to deliver something 2 weeks ago and hasn't replied to my last couple of mails. This sort of stuff takes the fun out of the process for me. I've worked with Angela many times and as well as supplying perfectly recorded and labeled files at the end of the project, if she is going to be late delivering something she drops me a mail to let me know beforehand. She also puts in a shift to make sure I've got all the revisions and changes I request and sometimes that's been a lot.

Over the last 15 years since we've had the internet and its been easier to reach out to people, I've contacted many singers on Facebook or Instagram and for the most part they've not replied or if they have, it's not gone anywhere. One of the singers I sent a message to wasMaurissa Rose. I had bought Theo Parrish "This is For You" and really liked her voice. Then I looked her up on Discogs and realised she'd also sang on other releases I liked going back to the 90s. So I sent out a message to Maurissa in Sept 2020. Not unusually I never heard back and forgot about it but then in August 2021 out of the blue I got a reply. We chatted a bit online and had a couple of conversations over the phone. Maurissa was warm, unpretentious and funny and I straight away felt comfortable speaking to her. I sent over a few backing tracks to have a go writing over, the first thing she sent me was an earlier version of "I Feel The Sun" I liked the song and her voice sounded lovely. We did another song remotely "Look at the Stars" which was included on my Produced with Love II album. After a few more phone conversations we agreed a visit from Detroit to London would be a good idea as Maurissadoesn't have a recording set up at her house like Angela and anyway, together in the same room is always better. So most of the "London / Detroit" album was written and recorded in my studio in Feb 2022. Maurissa is a very creative person and full of ideas, in some respects she reminds me of Diane. She's also got a little bit of Patrice Rushen in her voice on some songs, which was most welcome, as PR is someone who I always mentioned when I was asked "who would you like to work with?" in interviews. This is the first album of my career I've made featuring the same singer on every song. So something new, which is never a bad thing. I hope you have half as much fun listening to it as we did making it.