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I first heard Alison's voice -when she sent me two
songs to record a few years ago. She was living in Manchester at the
time and it wasn't easy for her to travel down to London, so she asked
me to sing them on the recordings. I did, but really wanted to hear her
voice on them. It wasn't till a year later that she came down to London
to meet me and record some more of her material. By this time she had
sent me quite a few basic recordings she had
done at her home studio. There was something about the voice, a timbre
and an emotional edge that was very different from anyone else I had
heard. Years later, I started writing 'All of the Above' I was writing
all the songs and the original idea was to have guest singers, including
Alison, on some of them and I would sing others. I hadn't been writing
very long by myself and lyrics didn't come easy. I approached Alison to
have a think about the concept and send me some lyric ideas.
She sent me about eight pages -which were
all just a stream of consciousness. No song format just sentences and
words that were inspired by the colour and mood concept. I'd never
worked like this before but it was refreshing to think 'outside the
box'. I took phrases, added my own lyrics and worked up some song ideas.
It was time to start recording some voice and I had gone off the idea
of using different singers, preferring to just use our two voices for
more of an
overall vocal identity. I knew exactly the kind of approach I wanted
for the vocal performances so I set about singing her voice parts using
vari-speed to make my voice higher so it would be in her key. The
amazing thing I discovered by doing this was that when you move the
pitch of my voice up. I sound like her and we found the same thing the
other way round. She sounds like me when her voice is lowered in pitch.
Strange but true!
We continued throwing ideas around -and
by this time I had written another six songs. We co-wrote 'Spirit of the
Physical' and Alison contributed 'Blue like the sky' 'No Answer' and
'My star and I'. A lot of the other material has lyrics that we worked
on together.
The original recordings were done on my old system using half inch
analogue tape so the quality was not as good as we can achieve now. I
was desperate to update the sound and get a final master for release.
Alison is living in America now so we flew her out to re-record all her
vocals on the new recordings. I am in the mixing mode on the material
now and Alison sounds fantastic.
I have had a few different vocalists record her songs and I have to
say, it is never the same. - Tony Lowe
About Alison by String -The first time I
heard 'All of the Above', it literally knocked me to the ground. The entire composition is a
masterpiece. I love Alison's writing and voice, which speaks me to as a
woman and ranks in the top five of my favorite female voices.
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Alison Fleming
