July 2012

'Camino Royale' from the album 'Highly Strung' has been re-recorded from scratch for Steve Hackett's forthcoming 'Genesis Revisited II' double album!

Steve & Nick in the studio again

When Steve told me that he wanted to include 'Camino Royale' in the track list, I couldn't have been more delighted when he also asked if I'd like to reprise my role on keyboards for the song.  Hard to believe it was almost 30 years ago when we first recorded it - scarily more than half a lifetime ago, but it seems more like 30 minutes..!  Amazingly, it was all still there in the memory banks, pretty much intact.  Roger King had prepared and sent me a template with guide stems for drums, bass and Steve's guitars, so I fired up the 'puter and got to work.  A lot has changed in music technology since 1982, mostly for the better. So it was great to be able to improve on the original keyboard sounds considerably - especially the Hammond and fairground organs, originally done with a Korg CX3 and a DX7 - but now with the VB3 Hammond plugin, and some fantastic fairground organ samples in Kontakt. Steve also suggested featuring Mellotron brass (we used Jupiter 8 synth brass on the original) so I loaded two sorts into M-Tron Pro, layered with some JP8 soundalike synth brass.  The resulting rough mix (even without the additional icing provided by jazz-fusion outfit Djabe) sounded really meaty!  I can't wait to hear the finished thing with the real drums, bass and additional bells and whistles in place.   

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