History: Primarily co-produced by Greg Kurstin, this album is a very loose concept album, with two tracks that feature background sounds that suggest a train station, and the remaining songs meant to be “stops” along a dreamworld where the ideas for music come from. The name of the album and its cover are based on […]
History: Paul worked with a total of four different producers this time around – Mark Ronson, Ethan Johns, Paul Epworth, and Giles Martin, with Giles Martin executive producing the entire album. This was Paul’s last album for Starbucks’ Hear Music label. My own personal history and initial prediction: The album cover of this one looks […]
History: Paul got together with jazz producer Tommy LiPuma to come up with ideas of various standards the two of them could record together. They decided to make a full album of it, also adding in a couple of Paul’s original songs done in the same style. With the exception of a little acoustic guitar, […]
History: Choreographer Peter Martins approached Paul about writing something for ballet, and Paul already had a discarded piece of music in mind that he thought could work. He ended up writing all the music and coming up with a story for the piece as well. His daughter Stella designed the costumes for the performance at […]
History: This time around Paul decided to add vocals to the songs to make the release a bit different than the previous works. Each song was recorded over the course of one day, though not one after the other. The two musicians would work on the songs periodically over the course of a year. My […]
History: Recording of most of the tracks on the album occurred before recording Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. When that album was finished Paul returned to these songs, and finding that he still liked most of them tweaked them here and there along with recording a few new songs to complete it. This was […]
History: Work on this piece began before Linda’s death when Anthony Smith asked Paul to compose something for a new auditorium being built at Magdalen College. Her death sadly meant that the piece could not be used for that purpose, but in time Paul finished the piece and it was initially performed in 2001, with […]
History: At the suggestion of George Martin, Paul began to work with Nigel Godrich, best known for his work with Beck and Radiohead, to do an album. The sessions began with the full band but Godrich requested that he and Paul work alone, and they ended up employing a very collaborative process between the two […]
History: Roy Kerr, using the alias Freelance Hellraiser, gained popularity in 2001 with his mashup song “A Stroke of Genius” combining Christina Aguilera and The Strokes. In 2004, he and Paul worked together to create mashups and remixes of some of Paul’s songs, and these were played as an opener before Paul’s concerts. Afterward they […]
History: Paul once again employed a similar live performance feel of production for this album, with all the bandmates largely recording together over the course of two weeks. The exception was the track “Freedom,” which was recorded shortly after The Concert for New York City post 9/11. It was such a last minute addition to […]
After The End 