Collaborating on an Alan1 remix

A few years back, while we were both living in the Seattle area, fellow ex-Microsoftie Mike Watson (@jmikewatson) and I met up a few times with various instruments to record some songs together. Mike was a little better at the keyboard than I was on the bass, but it was a fun side project that we called Alan1, and we generated a few songs and sounds that we were happy with. It was during these sessions that I snapped the stylized photos that some of you may recognize from my Twitter profile.

One song that we created during this time was called The Silver Chair, and was based on the CS Lewis book in the Narnia series and some lyrics on the topic that I had jotted down in the early 1990’s when my band My Cat Jeoffry was playing gigs almost every weekend in the Sacramento region.

We had a very basic bassline and drum track, to which I sang my lyrics and a melody that seemed to work. A week or so later, Mike produced what we’ve since referred to as the “stripped down demo” version of Silver Chair, which you can find on Soundcloud. And there is sat for almost a decade, until another SharePoint community personality and ambient/electronic musician and composer Keith Richie (@krichie) had a listen and decided to remix the song for us.

The new Alan1 track is called The Silver Chair (Keith Richie Remix) and can also be found on Soundcloud, as well as on YouTube:

 

Be sure to check out the Alan1 DigitalEP to hear this song and some of the other tunes that Mike and I created.

If you’re interested in hearing more of Keith’s work, check out his main site at https://music.krichie.com/ and on Soundcloud at https://soundcloud.com/keithrichie, which includes some of his many other collaborations.

And in case you’re into lyrics, here’s The Silver Chair:

She finds me in a room asleep and awake again
Staring at the world in a daze listening to the sounds again
My fingers in a struggle, held by the silver chair
Oblivious to what she says much less to want to catch her stare

Her eyes are open, She looks like me
Her lips begin to move, they’re all I can see
My thoughts are racing, her face so near
and all I can think to do is lay back down

She wants to take me aside asleep but still alive
Constant buzzing in my ear as I search for the sky
She wonders what I think, I only tell her lies
She thought my world a mistake, incantations I deny

Her eyes are open, She looks like me
Her lips begin to move, they’re all I can see
My thoughts are racing, her face so near
and all I can think to do is lay back down

Lay back down, lay back down
back in the silver chair
back in the silver chair