After three-and-a-half years working on his new album, Sola Rosa's Andrew Spraggon has finally got it together and is taking it on the road. JULE SCHERER reports
It's fair to say Andrew Spraggon is a perfectionist. The man behind Sola Rosa took three-and-a-half years to get it right.
He didn't just write the 11 tracks on Sola Rosa's forthcoming album, Get It Together, he arranged, recorded, produced and mixed them as well, while collaborating with a raft
of musicians and ignoring all genre-barriers.
The Pt Chevalier-based artist describes his music as "a blend of soul, funk, reggae, hip-hip, roots and Latin".
"I've been into so many different kinds of music," Spraggon says. And all of them are incorporated into the Sola Rosa sound.
"I'd get bored if I had to, for example, just make dub music, Latin or what ever," he says.
After fronting rock band Cicada in the 90s, he shifted his focus to electronic music, winning a Tui for his first album Solarized in 2001.
Over the years a specific Sola Rosa style evolved: deep, groove-ridden, multi-layered instrumental tracks radiating a playful lounge atmosphere.
Only Sola Rosa's last album Moves On, released in 2005, includes vocals and a more performance-based, up-beat style with guests including notable musicians like Nathan Haines, Spikey Tee and Deva Mahal.
On Get It Together Sola Rosa finally completes its metamorphosis from a self-released one-man project to a danceable live act.
"I always liked a mix of both instrumental and vocal tracks," says Spraggon.
"When I started doing Sola Rosa stuff I had been singing in a band for six years prior to that, and I never really considered myself a singer and I hated the whole lyric writing process.
"After that I thought, now that that door is closed I just want to do instrumental music and at that time there was a lot of so called electronic music and that was all instrumental based, so it was totally acceptable to do that."
After a while he felt the time was ripe to work with vocals again. But the move also had strategic reasons.
"I thought we needed somebody up there who is a front person and that's definitely not me," he admits.
"I'm no James Brown when it comes to playing life."
In addition, he realised that for getting funds to make a video, vocals were seen as essential.
Apart from Spikey-Tee, who is touring regularly with Sola Rosa, Spraggon convinced a couple of new singers to perform for the project.
Featuring on the album's first single, Turn Around is emerging Wellington singer Iva Lamkum. For the other two vocalists Spraggon looked farther away.
Singer and poet Bajka caught his attention while performing with Berlin-based collective Radio Citizens.
"I liked her voice and tracked her down through the Radio Citizen's mySpace page because at that time she didn't have one and said: 'Look I'm making this album and I send you some tracks if you're interested in collaborating ... and she was really keen'.
"Initially she did one track and then I ended up saying, that was really great and would you be interested doing another one."
She recorded them in a studio in Berlin and sent the vocal files over to New Zealand.
Although giving her voice to two of his songs, Spraggon has never met Bajka in person.
"We Skyped once but the rest of the time we just emailed", he says.
But Sola Rosa's global co-operations don't end there.
"I had a couple of tracks of UK rapper Serocee that I DJed out and then I looked at his profile page and thought he looks approachable and it turned out they're all really cool people.
"It was great. No dramas, really professional," he describes his experiences.
The three-and-a-half year period was filled with a lot of ups and downs and Spraggon is really happy that the work is done.
"Overall I learned a lot more about making decisions on the fly, learning what equipment I want to use rather than just trying everything out.
"And that's really the reason why it took so long, learning what equipment to use to get the sound you're after in your head."
Some tracks just fell in place but others were really difficult.
"De Ray was a nightmare,"' he remembers. "I almost threw that song away.
"But sometimes you're about to give up but then think: 'I'm going to make that song work'.
"The track went through three completely different stages of metamorphosis.
"It started up as something entirely different and ended up as what it is."
The result is an instrumental piece that sounds like spaghetti western meets 60s sci-fi movie.
With the studio work finally behind him, Spraggon is excited about bringing the music to the road.
Sola Rosa's long time members, Will Scott (drums), Matt Short (bass) and Ben White (guitar), accompanied by vocalists Spikey Tee and Iva Lamkum, are embarking late March on a tour, playing eight gigs from Auckland to Dunedin.
As some tracks on Get It Together feature up to 10 different musicians, the live versions will be quite different from the recorded ones.
"Obviously there is a lot of stuff we can't bring live musicians in for so I use a programme called Ableton Live," Spraggon explains.
"If there's horns or anything like that, that's all played via Ableton and the rest is the band: drums, base, guitar and two vocals, me playing keyboards and stuff like that."
But he promises fans of his instrumental tracks won't be disregarded either.
"We play a bit of both; we were working on the life set over the last few years.
"You figure out when you're playing life, what works and what doesn't.
"We mix it up and that's one of the reasons why I wanted to have more upbeat stuff on the new album, to have choice in our life sets."
LOWDOWN:
Who: Sola Rosa
New album: Get It Together, out now.
Past albums: Solarized (2001), Haunted Out-Takes (2003), Moves On (2005)
Playing: The Colossuem, Tauranga, tomorrow; Monte Cristo Room, Auckland, Saturday.
- NZPA
