Cariad

We've just finished a second twelve-hour day in the recording studio and I'm so tired my eyes are itching!

It's been a fabulous day, however. Properly fabulous. A day of music-making of the very highest standard. We had the finest line-up of the Rebel Chorus we've ever seen. There were 18 of us, augmented by some new members we've picked up along the way, including Carrie, who came to the Dominican Republic with us, Dave, who we found when we did the session at Abbey Road at the end of last year and Emma, who's playing Grimsby in Brass! The choir was conducted by Ben Holder, MD for Brass. We all missed our esteemed conductor Sam, but it was great to see Ben doing his thing. I deliberately lobbed him in the deep end to see if he'd float, and he swam to safety in seconds! This bodes well for Brass.

It was a happy, happy atmosphere. Nothing was rushed. We finessed every aspect of what we were recording. Everyone got decent breaks. The recording studio itself was a very good environment to work in. There's a fabulous green room - which has a pool table - and a television room, which kept everyone  entertained whilst we recorded soloists.

The gospel sound the choir created was absolutely brilliant, but I think the most special moment for me was recording Llio singing a chorus in Welsh. It really felt like the missing piece in the jigsaw, not just because we adore Lli, but also because Nathan and I are deeply proud of our Welsh ancestry, we both have siblings who live there, and the same sex marriage bill applies specifically to England and Wales. We need to be thanking Wales as well!

It was also great fun to have my old mate Ted Thornhill come in to sing his solo line. Ted's also writing a piece about the project in the Mail, so it was probably quite useful for him to see the mayhem!

At the end of the session our engineer said "that was the MOST fun ever... Those singers just got better and better..." As we emerged from the studio, the air was rich with a rather heady aroma. "What's that smell?" asked Llio. "It's the smell of optimism," I replied. And I genuinely feel it was.