Origins

 

Q: Would you mind running us through the genesis of Imaginaerium? How you two and Eric Bouillette got together and the first ideas that you had.

 

LP: Yes. So, Eric and I started talking about a project together because I came to Cheltenham, and he heard my voice. I was singing at Clive's gig, and I had to perform one song, which is one of the songs taken from his forthcoming third Alchemy musical. So, it's Mortal Light, and I am a figure of Macaria, obviously the baddie. And he heard my voice, and he loved it so much. We spoke before, we had a chat, because he contacted me on Facebook - I still have that beautiful and funny chat on Facebook - and he said, ‘You deserve an epic project, because you have this epic voice, I love how you sing, I'm impressed, I will write a song for you now, and you tell me what you think about it’. He started with with You Shall Love Us and obviously, I loved it. That was a great start. We both were in love with history so, we kind of decided to go into Italian history, which is so rich you know, full of traitors, bastards, and love, passion, war, and whatever. We started from there and were both were passionate about Medici. He said, ‘What do you think, starting with the Medici story?’ Yes, but who will write the story? I said, only one person can do that, in my opinion and that is Clive Nolan. I contacted Clive, and he said, yes. After a while, well, quite quickly, he said yes. And from there, Clive, this is your story…

 

CN: Well, yes, I mean, it was one of those perfect storms, really. Well, perfect isn't quite the right word, but we were hit by COVID, and we were locked down. And by being locked down, all of a sudden, all the tours and stuff had stopped; I had time. I don't normally get overly involved in other people's projects but Eric contacted me and was very persuasive and I said, ‘Well, let me look at this whole Medici thing and see if it kind of interests me.’ So I did a bit of reading, history and whatever and, yes, I got very interested. It kind of clicked with me and within a day, I'd come up with a concept and an idea about how many singers we could use and how we could go about it. Then I said, yes, I'll do the lyrics; I can do the concept. Then he said, ‘How about the music?’ and he sent me his six little chunks of music that he'd done. I had a list of those and I said, well, I think we could use five of them I’ll try and see what you think and I wrote a piece of material, and he loved it! I just ended up writing the rest of the album so I kind of found myself much more involved than I originally thought.

 

Q: Sorry… you came up with the whole thing in a day?

 

LP: Yes, exactly. I was on my way to say, you figured out that all this happened within 24 hours.

 

CN: I didn't write all the lyrics in a day.

 

Q: Yeah, I got that.

 

The Rise of Medici
 

CN: The structure, I did very quickly. I think it was within two days that I wrote one of the songs because I wanted him to get a feel for what I thought in that if I tear your material apart and treat it in a similar kind of way, with the orchestration styles and stuff like that, we can make this thing work in a very interesting way. Luckily, he was very happy just to let me run right over the whole thing.

 

LP: What surprised me was that we got basically one song every day nearly…or sometimes it went every two days so that album was literally written, I think, in ten days.

 

CN: Yeah, I mean, if I'm inspired, I can work fast. It depends really what the project is. There are two ways of inspiring me when it comes to writing, one, that it excites me as a brilliant idea or two, you slap a load of money on the table. One or the other would inspire me. (laughs)

 

Q: Okay, I get how creative you are now -ridiculously creative. Sadly we've lost Eric so Siege is the two of you Are you writing music Clive and just sending it over and then Laura, are you taking his vocal line and adapting it and changing and sending it back? How does that process work between the two of you?

 

Siege

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CN: Well the whole album began as an accident anyway. Originally, I had no intention of writing another Imaginaerium one because obviously Eric passed away and it just seemed a bit like it was his project and we were going to be working on a sequel - if that's the right word - a follow-up to From the Outside In which was basically an album of old songs that I'd written and Laura was of reinterpreting. We had a whole track list and it was all ready to go in a completely different direction but Laura wanted me to write one new song on the album and I said, okay, fine and so I wrote a song; That was All There Is To See. I really liked how that song worked with this idea of just voice, cello and piano and then I started thinking, you know, it would be interesting if such and such a thing happened. So, I think I wrote another song and then I kind of wrote another song, all quite quickly. Then a friend of mine said, ‘You know, that's Imaginarium’. I said, no, we're not doing an Imaginarium album and then I wrote something else and I just thought, yes, it is. So, in the end, what we did is we threw out the idea of doing the reinterpretations - and I'd already half an album and we just kept going basically. So the album happened almost by accident but what it did enable me to do is to find what I call the hat. I've been trying to explain this over the last few weeks. But basically, when I write, I sort of have a hat on. Like Arena or Shadowland or a musical – whatever - and I found the Imaginarium hat. So somehow in my head, I could see how to do Imaginarium. It doesn't simply be the same as another of the projects or things that I'm involved in. That's very important it meant I could see how we could be Imaginarium. So I write the songs and then I usually do what I call my Monty Python vocal. In other words, I always sing the vocals. Soprano all the way down, it doesn't sound great, but it puts the point across. Then I throw it at Laura and she gets on and turns it into something that sounds decent.

 

Q: Laura, when you get these guide vocals, how much do you take from it and how much do you change it and adapt it?

 

LP: Well, you Clive sends me the songs to me and I listen to the line that he wants and then I put all the ingredients that make this spicy, nice and beautiful for the listener. I put my passion in, which is the first ingredient and as I used to say, each and every word must be heard by the people. What I hear normally when I listen to a song is that I can't perhaps get what the people sing. If you don't get it, especially in a piece of music like Imaginarium songs, then you lose something. So what I do is really get the song inside of me. This is a very quick process. Very quick, because I make it mine in a few minutes. I just learn how it goes, how it sounds. When I fly to the UK, that's when the song comes to life. With all the spice ingredients, with all the nice stuff that I put in because in that moment, when I walk into the studio, I get the interpretation that I want from it. Sometimes, like in this case, Clive sent three songs before I flew to the UK. It was literally 24 hours before and I didn't have enough time to listen to them before leaving so I did it on the flight. Then when I arrived, I just made it mine and in a couple of days, we recorded them. It's a fast process, a passionate process. You have to know what you're singing. You have to know how to sing and also what you're singing, who you're singing about - Cry Boudicia! For example. Each and every word must be interpreted. That's so important and then I put my full power in that touches the ears of the people but everything comes to life when I go there.

 

CN: It's important that Laura comes here to record as well because I have a clear vision of what I want from any song I write and it helps for me to be able to kind of monitor things as they go. Nudge her in different directions sometimes and also, it's all in the editing and getting it right. You know, the magical moments that we want to kind of get out of this whole thing. Also, I'm a big believer in not allowing singers to breathe so it's all about finding the right phrasing. I'm very big on phrasing. And sometimes my idea of how something should be phrased differs a lot to what a singer would expect. I think Laura's starting to get used to my way of doing those sorts of things. I've found it's very important; Phrasing makes magic in the end.

 

LP: I learned this along the years of working with Clive. It makes such a difference to what you say. What you want people to reach.

 

Q: That's very interesting to me because I actually had another question here that pertains to that. I’ve listened to quite a bit of your other stuff, Laura, over the last couple of days in preparation for this but with Imaginarium, I heard something a bit different and I didn't know what it was. Would it be fair to say that that's Clive guiding you production-wise and that little tip you had from Eric about the pronunciation of every word. Would that be what I'm hearing?

 

LP: Well I am a language coach, so I work on my pronunciation for literally every word. I've done this for a long time as I want everything to sound perfect.

 

CN: I can give you some examples of where I will push Laura where she might not necessarily have to worry about it if she's doing a Beyoncé cover or something like that. We talked about phrasing. So very often, it's very common for a singer to assume that the phrasing should work line by line. In other words, you get so diddly-diddly-diddly-do then the next line goes there and the breath, they will tend to take the breath, each square chunk. I very often want these things to go across the line so I will be looking for them to breathe somewhere slightly earlier. That way, they can then go across to the next phrase without breathing. That's one example. The other thing with Laura – and she asks me to do this, so it's not just me forcing her on this – is that she's very conscious that certain key points in songs need to sound English, not American.

I mean, I do it myself sometimes. I'm just thinking it sounds a little bit American and I want it to sound English so the way that you finish words, the way that you do certain pronunciations will make a difference to that as well.

 

LP: I think these are the basic things because I tend to be very aware myself of what I want for my voice. I already start with my passionate way of singing. I can easily enter a song and I can easily enter what he wants and what I want. It has to be natural, it has to be beautiful and I have this vision of beautiful and how it sounds effective in the ears of people when they listen to it. I'm pretty much aware of what I want to do and what I want for my voice to achieve. The more I work with Clive, of course, the more I am aware of certain things so it gets easier and easier. It's a masterclass, I’d say.

 

Q: What's your vocal range Laura?

 

LP: I can’t actually tell you I can basically, I can sing whatever I want to sing. I started out with Whitney Houston and now I'm approaching more operatic things because I train for that. I'm doing loads of things. I want my low voice really to be perfect. You always work on your voice to get better and better, and you never arrive. For me, the interesting part of singing is that you always can achieve more and more and that's fantastic.

 

CN: Generally speaking, the technical vocal range is alto but she goes above and below the standard expected range. That's the power voice area would be in this alto range but we've been exploring the lower depths of her voice in this album, which is very interesting, and I always had a feeling that she'd probably be able to get a really good sound out of that so I wrote a song for her that forced her down there and the rule was very simple, I said, no power notes in this. This has got to be a very introspective, completely different approach to how you sing, and it's probably one of the best songs on the album. It's powerful in it, so powerful in emotion rather than power, if you see what I mean.

 

LP: Yes, you can feel this power in many ways, because there's of these deep songs, like Deep actually, where you have to put everything in the interpretation or in power. I love to go with the full power, open voice with no difficulties but when Clive asked me to explore that song, he said no power vocals, and I said, OK.

 

Q: Clive, you said you wrote one song specifically to get the lower range out of Laura. Is that something you do with all of your music, with Arena, or whatever you write for the musicians involved?

 

CN: It depends on what the voice is. I'll give you an example. Damien Wilson - who's now singing in Arena - obviously we're going up the higher end, but he's got quite a big range. When I wrote Alchemy, I asked Damien to make a guest appearance and he said, yeah, yeah, I'll do a song and so I wrote this thing called Burial at Sea but what I did is I wrote it as a fruity, lower baritone. He said, ‘That's not my thing’ and I said, ‘Yeah, but you can do it, can't you? and he did, and it sounded great. You know, sometimes you just get into a habit. You know, if you're a singer, you know that your normal way to go is up there, full on but there are other areas worth exploring sometimes and I did exactly that with Damien.

 

Sometimes it goes the other way. I'll have a singer who's a bit lazy, you know, and generally comfortable in a sort of mid-baritone and push them up a little but generally, if you're writing a song, to know the singer and to know the voice is very important for me. I very rarely write a song if I don't know who the singer is. I like to think that most of the vocals I do are crafted to suit the singer.

 

Q: The Rise of Medici was a concept; Siege is more of a theme the clue being in the title of course. How did Siege come about in the way that the songs fit together?

 

CN: Well, apart from maybe two or three little bits of music, I've never written abstract music. I always have to have narrative or visual or thematic. I have to be able to see a song when I'm writing it. I don't mean hear it, I mean see it. It's my process. I can't speak for other songwriters or other music writers but if I can see what it is I'm trying to write, then it makes a massive difference to my ability to then turn that into a piece of music. Yes, you're right. With Medici, we had effectively a narrative, a storyline, and I was able to kind of pick key moments out and then can hang the songs off that. I write musicals, very similarly. I write a story. You have key moments and you can sort of hang everything together. Siege, is a concept album because it's a concept of being under siege and it started with just a simple idea that one person can feel under siege from the rest of the world and in many ways, all those lyrics, even Boudicia and some of the historicals, sort of touch on that same idea. So it wasn't that hard to kind of start looking at this idea of being under siege, whether it's under siege perhaps through illness or through the stresses of everyday life or just because that's the nature of who you are it just seemed possible to look at this idea from lots and lots of different points of view. Where it began was very simple; it was All There Is to See, that very first song that I wrote that was intended for a different album and that was the simple idea. I Well, actually, it was a combination of things. First of all, I had a dream. I dreamt that I was performing on stage with Laura and there was a cellist and I could feel the energy that the cello was giving to this piano and voice thing so when I woke up, I thought, I've got to do that. That's it! Voice, cello, piano. I didn't have any specific music at that point, but I could see the music so that was not a difficult process. You know, an hour later I've got where I'm headed but subject matter, I was sitting in this little studio that I've got right here and I mean, I really like this studio. In many ways – and it's hard to explain - when I'm sort of inside the songwriting and the music and everything, it's this tiny little bubble that holds out the rest of the world, as far as I can see. I can see the rest of the world, but from the safety of this tiny little room and then I started thinking, well, actually, that's not bad, that sort of way of looking at things. I sort of took that idea of, you know, that I've sort of locked myself away in my own castle - in anyone's home, it's their castle and I can see the rest of the world from where I'm standing but I'm keeping you all out because I have my own particular kind of chaos in here, which makes sense to me. That was the starting point and I wrote that song and then that idea started to just develop as the idea of keeping the rest of the world out or being under siege.

 

Q: Laura, you mentioned to me that it was your idea to bring in Dorian Gray.

 

LP: Yes, it was initially chosen for the first idea that we have to the follow-up to from the Outside In album. I found that little jewel that Clive recorded many, many years ago for the Japanese bonus track on Neverland. It was quite an unknown song, which I thought should be really my song and I said, ‘Please, Clive, can we include it?’ and he said, yes. As Clive said, the initial idea for the album was completely different and then when it turned into Imaginarium we dropped song after song, dropped and dropped and dropped but that song, it was impossible to drop it because it was so fitting in the concept of siege because it's the siege of aging and that was so inside of it. Still, it was an old song so what we decided was to give it a huge importance on the bonus album.

 

More than an album

 

Q: I was coming to the bonus album and the artwork in my next questions. Let’s start with the bonus album, please continue with Dorian Gray Laura.

 

LP: I made it mine because I really I think it's such a beautiful melody such beautiful words that I really went into it. I couldn't let that song go. It had to be there. It had to be there and that's why we thought that two versions of Dorian Gray could give it the bonus album importance.

 

Q: Actually, both albums both of the bonus albums are they're so good that I'm interested to know that as you're working through the actual album are there points where you sit there and go ‘Oh, if we take that part and that part like the piano and vocal that would make a good bonus track or does this kind of come as an afterthought?

CN: It threads its way through the process. You're right in that sometimes we'll be working on something and sometimes Laura might say something or I might have an idea. Yeah, we kind of make a mental note of ‘if we you know do this it could work quite nicely’. I mean a good example is All There Is To See on the main album where

it's Laura singing while on the bonus album, it's a duet but the main album is always the priority so we make a mental note of it. We don't really give the bonus album any active thought until the album is made. Once we get to that point then it's like right, bonus album, what do we got and we look at the notes. Well we could do the duet version of ll The Is To See… we've got that acoustic idea for One Last Arrow…It's all part of the process.

 

Q: The artwork as well. I mean the ear books you do are terrific. This is much bigger than just releasing a CD.

 

CN: It should be an event; that's the thing. Every album should be an event. I'm not going to slip another album out six months later and stick it on streaming and call it. When I was younger I used to think that when an album came out that was an event. You'd get the album, you'd read the credits, read the lyrics and look at the artwork and that's why the ear books are really good because they're bigger so you get that sort of vinyl experience almost. And now vinyl's coming back of course you can get the vinyl experience as well.  Thirty years ago all a band had to do was produce 40 minutes of music, 20 minutes a side bring it out, job done. Nowadays you've got to do 50 to 60 minutes of music, you've got to do a bonus album, you've got to do a documentary about the making of…I mean honestly people are getting so... and then they complain because your album cost a pound more than it did 30 years ago. (laughs)

 

LP: They complain about it and don't even know how much work there is behind it but for us it's a completely different universe. You see the difference between a pop album and something like this where you involve people like David Wyatt who you know so you have quality in the concept. Another thing that I think is very important is this bonus album really gives you that extra insight. The DVD where we explain everything, how we got together, the making of it and includes the video of The Final Redoubt. I have to say as well that it's very important to have someone at our label to support us. Mark Monforti and Reina Monforti at ProgRock.com Essentials they really put the effort in supporting the project. It’s a huge thing when you have someone believing in you and you have the possibility to come out with such an important project and package because it makes a difference when people see it and say ‘Wow!...if it starts from the package then the music must be great!’

 

Q: Can't argue with that! Now, Rise of Medici you premiered last January I believe, wasn't it? A year last January. Are there any plans to premiere Siege or any plans at all to take anything on the road?

 

CN: Yes there are. I moved to this house about three years ago and it's a Victorian Pile just outside of Hereford and basically, it has a walled garden and in that walled garden, the previous owners had put in a whopping great swimming pool which is pointless and it was in a terrible state of disrepair so we filled it in.

 

Later, I'm standing on the top of it filled in and I said ‘Do you know what this place needs? A Viking mead hall. That's what it needs a Viking longhouse’. So we built one and that has become like a venue which I've now done two events, one just a couple of days ago in fact a couple of days ago and if you look on my Facebook page, you'll probably see some references and photographs and what have you but anyway, in October, we've got the third ‘Music at the Mead Hall’ event and that is going to be headlined by Imaginaerium debuting the Siege album as well as stuff from Medici. I announced it at this event this weekend and we sold about 20 tickets. There are only 60 tickets and that's the way I want it to be. That's going to happen October the 10th and 11th and then a few days later we go out with Imaginaerium and we're going to do Belgium and Holland. We're doing two nights in a theatre in Holland as well. So we've got some gigs coming up for that later in the year and we will be playing the majority of the Siege album and some of the Medici and maybe even a few surprises.  Who knows.  It's a very personal very bespoke sort of event and I like to think that the people who've been to these two absolutely loved it and they're certainly coming back and there's the Mead Hall but as much happens outside as it does. So, for example, in October there's a whole Viking reenactment group who are going to be setting up camp. The blacksmith is coming and he literally makes Thors Hammers and things like that you can buy on the site. There's all little shops, there's food and there's drink, it's a medieval extravaganza.

 

Q: I may even fly to England for that.

 

LP: That would be great! According to the to the reviews so far, everybody tells us that Siege better than Medici. Doing the second album was me being a friend to Eric. I spoke each and every day to Eric and it’s is like bringing on his dream, making it stay alive because this is what he always told me. ‘Please Tiger don't let this dream die, don't let this project die’. I think he's looking from there and likes what he sees.

 

Q: What else is coming up for the two of you?

 

Q: Well Imaginaerium is out on April 4th and Laura will also be out on in another album with me a little bit after that which is Mortal Light which is the third alchemy musical She’s playing the baddie in that particular storyline.

 

Q: Time to go. Thank you both very much for doing this, much appreciated

 

LP: Thank you Hopefully we'll see you over here you know, later in the year!

 

CN: We'll keep in touch and we'll speak to you soon.