To start, Paul, can you tell us what you’ve been up to recently?
I’ve just finished recording the vocals for ‘Storm’ - the track I’m working on with Madsen - I’m currently mixing them so I can send them over for him to work on the track. Once that’s done I can start on the Bispatial remix, hopefully.
The new track is called “Hiding From The Storm” - you’ve recently recorded ‘Stormwalking’ and now this; is there a storm theme happening presently?
No, not at all, pure coincidence really. I think it must be something floating about in my subconscious. The title came from a line in the song; we wanted to call it ‘Safe From Harm’ but obviously that’s a well-known Massive Attack song so decided on this instead. I think it has a nice sound to it though.
So how did this collaboration come about?
I’ve got another website that I use for my music which Madsen is also on. He added me as a friend so I checked out his profile and quite liked his music. What also caught my eye is that he’s from Dereham, which is 20 minutes away from me in Norwich so I just sent him a quick message saying ‘I like your music and good to see some other local talent.’ He replied saying he loved my stuff and asked if I’d be interested in providing vocals on one of his tracks - obviously I said yes!
How long have you been collaborating on the track?
Not long at all, it was only about 4 weeks ago that he contacted me and then only about 10 days between him asking me and me getting the demo track from him. The day I got it, I quickly put down some vocal ideas and sent them straight back to him to see what he thought. He said he liked what I’d done and asked me to come up with a more traditional pop-song arrangement, you know - verse/chorus type thing - as opposed to the usual dance track with a repeated hook. Mixing it has been the longest part so far.
How have you found working with another artist?
Actually it’s been really interesting. I’d worked with QT on Sure but this was entirely different. Normally - like with Sure - I do all the music and QT writes a song over the top. This time I had to write the song over the top of someone else’s music, which I’ve never done before. I have to say, I surprised myself - I didn’t think I would be able to do it.
Hot on the heels of working with new band Sure, Bispatial has teamed up with electro artist Madsen to record “Hiding From The Storm.” Bispace quizzed Paul about this new partnership.
As Bispatial you normally work alone - how much freedom did you have on this project?
Quite a bit really. The music is entirely Madsen’s and actually that was quite liberating as I didn’t have to worry about the music this time, only the vocals. It did help that when I heard the backing track, I was blown away - I really love this song! With the melody and the lyrics, he left it completely up to me, which was nice - no pressure!
There were no clashes of ego then?
God, no - he’s really easy-going which helped, so it was a real collaboration. It was strange - I am normally quite precious about my songs but I think because we wrote this together, I was quite happy to share my toys (laughs).
So whilst this is a collaboration, you and Madsen wrote your respective parts separately?
Yeah. Funnily enough, as it’s all been done by e-mailing stuff back and forth, we haven’t even met yet! We will sort that soon though - we’ve got plans to meet up.
Is this a one-off collaboration or can we expect further projects from Paul Madsen and Bispatial?
I’d really like to do more with him - I’ve really enjoyed this and I like his stuff. He has mentioned maybe doing another track, something a bit more ambient to suit my voice. He’s possibly doing a remix of “Secret Love” for Bispatial too - which is quite exciting. It will be interesting to see what he comes up with!
March 2008
“Hiding From The Storm” features on Madsen’s Ten Days EP on Fluid Groove Records (see the releases section for details).
