Welcome to Wonderland

We’re in our other studio in Brighton which we use to ‘finish’ stuff,
putting our EP together which is like a mini-album and is coming out soon..
Wonderland will be the lead track..
This was one of the first songs we wrote together at treehouse.. and it all started with a melody and acoustic guitar chords that Paul and I had and loved but didn’t know what to do with.. the chord structure is a circle of 5ths where the bassline goes down a 5th each time and ends up at the beginning. My first idea for it was a slinky bond-type theme tune or something but when I got to the treehouse I knew it had to be about me growing up and dreaming but being a bit scared cos that’s what the place made me think of..and well Alice in Wonderland was one of my favourite books.. so we put it down bare bones n all with a sketchy lyric whilst Mark jammed about on the Rhodes. This gorgeous thing has such a lovely magical sound – its soo big and old but has soul! We do loads of stuff with Rhodes – and now - well the other night - I found a totally rare 54 key rhodes which is smaller and more portable so we don’t have to break our backs lugging it up and down stairs at gigs anymore! look at this beauty here!
Anyway the song aint finished here cos we wanted a ‘Brighton’ element in our songs.. being originally from South London and seeing Brighton from the outside gives me a real feeling of escape and freedom.. So after our sessions Mark went away and out of the blue came up with a whole orchestral piece based on an oom pa pa marching band theme with trombones, flutes and strings etc..

mp3: 'Wonderland' clip

This totally blew us away and also made me think of the Salvation Army (there was a HQ in my high street where I grew up), and The Mummers Parades in Philadelphia..
This awesome (well I think so!) piece of work became a yardstick by which we measured all our other songs (do they live up to it??). It took ages to record live.. heres some pics of the players: