We’re delighted to announce that The Nextmen have been given the go ahead by Universal Music to record a new acoustic version of one of their songs for Tropical Forest Project: Ecuador.

The Nextmen, aka Dom Search and Brad Baloo, have been producing, mixing and DJ-ing all across the world. Influenced by their eclectic DJ sets, their current and third studio album, ‘This Was Supposed To Be The Future’, revels in everything from reggae, dancehall and hip hop to funk, soul and rare groove.

The Nextmen were recommended to me by palaeoclimatologist Professor David Beerling back in June at the Hay-On-Wye Festival of Literature. David, whose book The Emerald Planet examines the role evolving plants had in shaping the atmosphere during the last 3.5 billion years, gave a brilliantly lucid and beautifully illustrated talk entitled Fossil Forests and Climate Crisis, following which I asked him, over a jug of Pimms, who he would like to see on our Ecuador album. The rest, as they say, is history… or soon will be.

Two years ago I joined the Ginkgo Music team to produce a 14 track CD with different acoustic artists.It took some time to get the Ginkgo vehicle into the right gear but I think we’ve gathered a first class line up.

One of the things I’ve found particularly satisfying on this project is the fact that the music is so performance driven. I remember our first recording session with Kate Walsh. She sat down, played the song four times and that was it: a real rock’n'roll moment dressed in singer/songwriter clothes (if that makes sense to anyone).

And Devon Sproule, who generously came all the way from O2 venue (where she was supporting Lucinda Williams) to record her track. I should mention we later added pedal steel guitar player BJ Cole on Devon’s track who agreed to give his time and playing in support of our cause. He also entertained me with tales from the road and I discovered he worked on some of my favourite David Sylvian records (David Sylvian and I once shared the same hair style).

Dobet Gnahoré and her guitarist/husband Colin came over from Belgium and we worked in more detail on this track adding percussion and even some backing vocals. Being a guitarist myself I couldn’t help noticing Colin didn’t make one mistake the whole day (how does he do it?).

Cibelle is another artist I was really excited to work with. We recorded her track really simple, voice and guitar. I love the recording we’ve done, it sounds really intimate and fresh. Great voice.

Who else can I mention? Martha Tilston, Nathan Ball, Alan Lacroix, Morgan Szymanski, Valentin Gerlier, they’re all great. I’ll write more about them next time. Right now I am looking forward to the session with David McAlmont who is someone I’ve thought very highly of for some time.

Best

Peter Larsen (producer, Tropical Forest Project: Ecuador)

About two and a half years ago I was teaching a piano lesson at the Conservatoire (Blackheath). My adult student (who seemed to have plenty of talent but very little application to his piano studies) showed me some publicity material for a project he was setting up. The project sounded great, but I noticed that they had no website so I offered to help, as web programming is another string to my bow, as it were.

Dominic gave up his piano lessons and I joined the growing team at Ginkgo Music, making lots of great friends and discovering some amazing music that I may not have otherwise found. Anybody that knows me will know that it’s not often that I say things like that - but this music is genuinely high quality stuff, whilst still being open and engaging.

Two years down the line and I’m in another piano lesson - or at least I’m in my teaching room at St Dunstan’s College waiting for my pupil, who is late. Whilst waiting I pull out my headphones and grab a sneaky listen to a track our producer Peter has sent me that morning, entitled “This is the Waltz” by Valentin Gerlier. I’m completely entranced, so when Georgina arrives (rather late and a bit out of breath) I just smile and offer her one of the headphones… “Coooool!”, she says and I tell her about the project and what I’m up to. I trained at the Royal College of Music as a composer and orchestrator and I’ll be adding some orchestral touches to some of the tracks on Tropical Forest Project: Ecuador - an exciting project for the summer! I’ll keep you posted how it’s going…

Ben

Recently Martha Tilston recorded for us a beautiful new song inspired by Tropical Forest Project: Ecuador and our mission to halt deforestation. We thought is was stunning, but she was not finally convinced (ah… perfectionists!) and so very generously Martha yesterday returned to our producer’s studio yesterday to record a new version of Good World, an equally beautiful song originally recorded for her last album ‘Of Milkmaids and Architects’. Thank you, Martha!

We can also report that last week classical guitarist Morgan Szymanski recorded Prelude No.1 by Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. It was our producer Peter Larsen’s first experience of working with a classical musician and it went swimmingly, by all accounts.

Marvellous news on the recording front:

David McAlmont emailed me some lyrics recently - he has written a song for Tropical Forest Project: Ecuador. The song is written from the point of view of a Mountain Tapir in captivity, remembering the sounds of the forest. The Mountain Tapir, currently an endangered species owing to deforestation and habitat destruction, is a Latin American mammal with a very strange snout. David has been exploring lyrics that are focused more on storytelling than on personal feelings, and we can’t wait to hear this new song.

We are also in discussion with Ecuadorian singer Margarita Laso who has agreed to record for the project and is very excited. Margarita is the first Ecuadorian artist on the album, and one of the things for us to work out is how to record her (all the songs to date have been recorded by our producer Peter Larsen at his studio in South London). Many thanks to the Ecuadorian Embassy who put us in contact with Margarita. Welcome, Margarita.

Mexican classical guitarist Morgan Szymanski recently came over to Ginkgo HQ to play us a Prelude by Heitor Villa-Lobos, a Brazilian composer much inspired by the Amazon rainforest, which he will be recording for the the album. Morgan has been winning awards for his playing and was recently featured in Gramophone Magazine’s “One to Watch” slot.

Meanwhile, last week a few of us from the Ginkgo team were at the wondrous Hay Festival in Wales, where many of the authors appearing this year were environmentalists. Amongst those I met to discuss the project, one of the high points was meeting palaeoclimatologist Professor David Beerling over a jug of Pimms. His account of the role plants (yes, forests in particular) have played in sculpting planet Earth’s atmosphere was the most lucid and beautifully illustrated I have seen. You may recall that Ginkgo is the oldest surviving genus of trees - Ginkgos developed before dinosaurs (around 200 million years ago). Here at Ginkgo we have a soft spot for palaeontologists…

Last Sunday some of the Ginkgo Music team went to see Cibelle’s gig in Stoke Newington, reviewed in The Independent this week.

She recently recorded a minimalist version of ‘Instante de Dois’ (a song from her last album The Shine of Dried Electric Leaves) for Tropical Forest Project: Ecuador, and at the gig it was the second song in her set.

She had glittery blue eyeshadow over one eye in a Ziggy Stardust kinda way, and must have a brain the size of a planet to support that beautiful voice whilst weaving in and out of the mix various futuretastic gadgets making electronic washes and sounds, backing herself on vocals, adding in plastic children’s toys AND playing guitar… humbled I was!

Great news - Devon Sproule, who recorded her lovely, haunting song ‘Plea for a Good Night’s Rest’ for us in November accompanied by the legendary BJ Cole on pedal steel guitar, is appearing on Later with Jools Holland this Friday (29 February at 11.35pm).

The song, originally recorded on her 2003 album Upstate Songs, begins with the words “There are thick stars, up above where the trees part themselves…” and is full of beautiful vivid detail that takes you to a balmy night in Virginia.

Jools’ guests this week are Supergrass, Vampire Weekend, Chris Barber, Andy Fairweather Low, The Kills and Devon.

Monday: we met our environmental charity partners World Land Trust at their offices in Halesworth in Suffolk. It was a marvellous meeting – since we first created our partnership agreement with them for the Ecuador project two and a half years ago things have really moved on. World Land Trust are very excited about the project - dare I say it, even surprised by where we are already! Helpfully they are putting the feelers out for Latin American singer-songwriters too. There’s more to tell, some exciting possibilities…

Tuesday: Brazilian singer Cibelle recorded an acoustic take of her song Instante de Dois (from her latest album The Shine of Dried Electric Leaves) - the 9th recording for Tropical Forest Project: Ecuador. Despite feeling ill on the day she managed to pull off a recording that our producer Peter and I love: very beautiful, gentle and mysterious, like a mist passing between trees in a cloudforest, and with a hint of the Sixties about it. And as always with Peter’s recordings, she sounds like she’s in the room with us.

Friday: Devon Sproule (who recorded her song Plea for a Good Night’s Rest for us) emailed me to confirm she’s appearing on Later with Jools Holland at the end of February!

Onwards and upwards…

It’s been a while since I updated the blog but a lot’s been going on.

A few days ago, Dobet Gnahoré, accompanied on guitar by her husband Colin, recorded a new song written specially for the project. The song, called Ko Kpa (Forest), is written in Dida, one of the languages of the Côte d’Ivoire. This completes track 7 of the Tropical Forest Project: Ecuador album.

Dobet is a 23-year-old singer and songwriter from Côte d’Ivoire who learnt her multi-disciplinary approach to music in an artist community near Abidjan, and was voted BBC World Music Awards: Best Newcomer in 2006. She settled in France in 1999, and her socially conscious lyrics are performed in 7 different languages. Onstage, she is a singing, dancing, multi-instrumentalist and powerful presence.

Discography:

• Ano Neko (ContreJour, 2004)
• Acoustic Africa (Various artists, Putumayo, 2006)
• Music from the Chocolate Lands (Various, Putumayo, 2004)
• Na Afriki (Cumbancha, 2007)

Here are the other tracks recorded so far for Tropical Forest Project: Ecuador:

Kate Walsh (UK) You Are Home

iTunes No.1 album singer-songwriter Kate’s song makes people stop in their tracks and listen – world class (our producer’s words!)

Devon Sproule (US) Plea for a Good Night’s Rest

We first heard Devon sing this song in a stripped down version accompanied only by her guitar and legendary slide player B.J.Cole’s haunting tones at the Spitz. We had to have it! Devon kindly popped into our studio to record before supporting Lucinda Williams at the O2 that evening.

Valentin Gerlier (Italy/UK) This is the Waltz

Novelist Valentin’s extraordinarily constructed song, sung in his angelic voice, sounds at first like something from a French movie in the swinging 60s, or maybe opentop Bond negotiating hairpin bends in the Southern Alps… until you tune into the words and then you’re back in the trenches of the First World War. A masterpiece.

Nathan Ball (UK) Hideaway Snowflakes

Heart-throb Nathan Ball arrived at the recording session barefoot, and his beautiful song takes us on several journeys, taking in the skies over Wales and going on from there.

Alan Lacroix (UK) August

Alan’s song made me cry the first time I heard it.

Martha Tilston (UK) Untitled

We thought Martha’s exquisite, episodic and complex new song, written at breakneck speed and finished in our producer’s living room, was perfect when we first heard it, but she is a perfectionist and is returning to re-record shortly.

Great news – again! – singer-songwriter Martha Tilston (www.marthatilston.co.uk) has agreed to record a track for our tropical forest project: ecuador CD. I love the song ‘Space’ on her myspace – it has a mesmerising guitar riff that could go on forever; other members of the team seem to prefer one of the other songs.

Martha is even considering writing a new song inspired by the project. (more…)