SOULPERFREESIA ALBUM UPDATE

As many of you know, since July 2012 myself and the Princess have been working tirelessly on our forthcoming Soulperfreesia album. I'm not going to lie that this is probably the most challenging album we've made, and this is for a number of reasons.

Reason number one being that Princess Freesia is from Australia and had to go back there as her Visa ran out, but the good news is that she is half Latvian and is currently in the application process of getting an EU passport which in turn means she can live in the UK and come back and forth as she pleases. This could be a timely process and could happen next week, or at the very worst next year, so as you can imagine it is very all up in the air and not really ideal for our creative output together. But we will keep on going regardless and our fingers remain crossed. We're still doing what we can over the Internet and are making the best of a bad situation.

The album was actually finished before she left in November, we kind of rushed it a bit as we knew that Freesia had to get back, so everything was on a deadline. I actually mixed the entire album in October and I remember us having a couple of drinks and deciding to listen to it. This turned into a bit of a nightmare as we only got through the first 3 songs and had to turn it off, there were problems everywhere, from the musical arrangement clashing with Freesia's vocal arrangements, drums not sitting right and particular sounds that just grated on my nerves. That said there were 6 tracks that were (and still are) absolute killers. At one point we were about to just say "Sod it" and put it out regardless but when Miss Freesia left for Australia I went and learned some more advanced engineering skills from a good friend of mine Michael Rendall (He's worked as engineer for people like Paul McCartney, The Verve and loads of other prolific names and is a fantastic producer and musician in his own right) He also pimped my computer with loads of new plug ins and musical instrument patches. So in January, with all these new sounds, tips and tricks at my fingertips, I decided to re-approach the album and re-mix it completely from scratch!

After much deliberation, myself and the Princess agreed that we should take off the songs that that didn't give us goosebumps so I started writing new songs to replace them, this time getting inspired from 80's soul music all over again. the problem was (in my mind anyway) that the songs we didn't like as much, they didn't fit into the project and the continuity was a bit all over the place. So I made 5 new instrumentals and sent them over to Princess to lay her magic over them . I could tell they were a much better choice as I could see Miss Freesia's face light up whenever I sent her a new one, and over the past 2 months she has recorded (from her bedroom in Australia) all the brand new songs (Trust me, she's written some BANGERS and they sound brilliant). Now when we listen to them all together as an album, they sound like probably the best work we have ever done together.

We have 2 more tracks to finish and now (I'm glad to say) we are totally happy with each and every one of them. The tracks we have left out we'll make available at a later date as a "B Sides" project. As I said earlier, this whole thing has been so challenging on the both of us. When we are not in the same country making music together, things become difficult, especially with the time difference and the distance. Yes, we could put the album out now, but I want Freesia to be here in the UK when it's released, we put so much hard work into it I feel she deserves to be here to enjoy it all when it comes out, plus be available for any shows other opportunities that may come of it. So apologies to everyone that has been asking me when it's going to be released, these are our reasons and we just hope you can understand our situation here.

Before I finish, I'd like to give special thanks to all the musicians that have contributed to this album, prepare yourselves for some fantastic performances from Punk Pappa (bass) Carl Hudson (keys) Andy Tolman (bass) and the Queen of Soul Jocelyn Brown who does an incredible duet with princess Freesia that I know everyone is going to love. 

So to finalise, the album WILL be out as SOON as Princess Freesia returns to the UK. We are now well on the way of having an album that gives us goosebumps all the way through and we hope it does the same for you too.

Lots of love,

SoulP