"LAGUNA" available now from www.newworldmusic.com
Hello campers! D*Note is the band that I've had since the early nineties. Back then myself and like minded musicians (Matt Cooper, Kid Loops, Sunship) were trying to wed jazz with different types of dance music with varying degrees of success. Now it's 2006 and I'm back with a new album, "Laguna" featuring my favourite vocalist in the whole wide world, Beth Hirsch. Beth famously sang on the first Air album with her distinctively ethereal vocals. We've made a record of some of our favourite songs from the seventies, the songs that went on to influence all the dance music and jazz and soul musicians of the nineties.
I had always wanted to work with Beth, ever since I heard her ethereal vocals (like the rest of the world) on the Air track, "All I Need". I was in the process of raising money for a feature film, January 2nd (www.january 2ndthemovie.com) and was thinking of trying to fill it with the music from the sixties and seventies that had influenced me: Roy Ayers, Crosby Still & Nash, Joni Mitchell. What all these artists had in common was that they were making tasteful popular music, but all had been interested in the more complex extended harmonies of jazz and classical music. I was also interested in finding less well known songs by these artists to use in the film because its not always the music that people are most well known for which is necessarily their best. I didnt want to just cover any well-known hits, in other words, they had to be hidden gems, the sort of things that music lovers love finding.
Beth and I recorded the album, me in London, Beth in LA, then I mixed it in my bedroom (literally) with my usual engineer Dave Pemberton. Strangely enough Beth and I hadn't seen each other in three years up until and a year after the record was finished and I downloaded Beths vocal from the server in Burbank, California, where they had been recorded. And so came "Laguna", the sixth D*Note album and current release. It features some of Beth and my favourite songs, Joni Mitchells Edith and the Kingpin (one of Beth's) and Being Alive (one of mine). The album is an attempt to use the disintinctive D*Note sound and marry it to strong American songs, connecting 70s folk rock with drum and bass.
Another album soon to be released is the soundtrack to January 2nd, the movie I directed 2006. Working with long time collaborator Matt Cooper the two of us have woven together the best of what we do. We've been into similar music since we first met and started working together in 1992. We had already collaborated to great effect on "The Long Goodbye" and "Coming Up" on D*Note and on Calisto on Fuchsia Dog, but it was on this soundtrack that our musical styles created their best synthesis.
D*Note Discography
1 D*Note Now Is The Time Baseline 1992
2 D*Note Scheme of Things (12) Dorado 1992
3 Circle In The Round Devil of Cruelty (12) Dorado 1992 4 D*Note Rain (12) Dorado 1993
5 D*Note The More I See/D*Votion (12) Dorado 1993
6 D*Note Babel (LP) Dorado 1993
1. Judgement 2. Babel 3. Now Is the Time 4. Gimme Some Liquor 5. Aria 6. The Mandarin and the Courtesan 7. Rain 8. Bronx Bull 9. Omni 10. The More I See 11. Pharoah 12. The Message 13. Lydia 14. Scheme of Things 15. D*Votion
7 D*Note Now Is The Time (12) Dorado 1993
8 D*Note Now Is The Time (12) Guru Remixes Dorado 1993
9 D*Note Iniquity Worker (12)
10 D*Note Iniquity Worker (12) Roni Size Remix Dorado 1995
11 D*Note Garden Of Earthly Delights (12) Dorado 1995
Ballistic Bros/Xpress2 remixes
12 D*Note Criminal Justice (LP) Dorado 1995
1. Criminal Justice 2. Place in the City 3. Deep Water 4. Iniquity Worker 4. Perspex 5. Solomon's Blade 6. Flesh and Blood 7. V 8. The Garden of Earthly Delights
13 D*Note Criminal Justice (12) Dorado 1995
14 D*Note Criminal Justice (12) A Guy Called Gerald Remix Dorado 1995
15 D*Note Coming Down (LP) Virgin 1996
1. Lost & Found 2. The Short Goodbye 3. Avin it 4. Deep Water 6. Just Little Chaser 7. Coming Down 8. Kite Hill 16 D*Note Waiting Hopefully (CD) Phase Action Remix Dorado 1996
17 D*Note Waiting Hopefully (12) Virgin 1997
18 D*Note Waiting Hopefully (12) Deep Dish/4 Hero Remixes Virgin 1997
19 D*Note D*Note (LP) Virgin 1997
1. Moody 2. Lost And Found 3. Coming Up 4. Waiting Hopefully 5. The Long Goodbye 6. Say What You Mean 7. Tri Cyclic 8. Black Dog 9. Changeless
20 D*Note Lost & Found (12) Joe Clausell /Lil Louis/ Virgin 1997
Sunship/Danny Tenaglia Remixes
21 D*Note Say What You Mean Mantronix remixes Virgin 1997
(unreleased)22 D*Note Channel 4 on air theme Channel 4 1999
23 D*Note D*Votion 1999 featuring Beth Hirsch (12)
Virgin 1999 24 D*Note Piano Phase Steve Reich Remixed 2001
25 D*Note Shed My Skin (12) Virgin 2002
26 D*Note Shed My Skin (12) Peter Heller/Airwave/ Virgin 2002 PMT remixes
27 D*Note Fuchsia Dog (LP) Channel 4 2002
1. Calisto 2. Same Mistake 3. Upstream 4. Shed My Skin 5. D*Votion 2002 6. Atomised 7. You Don't Know Me 8. Hill
28 D*Note Laguna (LP) New World Music 2006
1. Everybody Loves The Sunshine 2. Wichita Lineman 2. At Last Im Free 4. How Long 5. Guinevere 6. Edith and The Kingpin 7. Then Along Came You 8. Being Alive 9. Canyon 10. Overture 11. January 2nd
