the debut long player by pete lawrence

Pete Lawrence’s Chilled by Nature debut album, 'Under One Sun' was released on Big Chill Recordings on August 21st 2006. The album features a number of live guests, including The Swingle Singers, and Mozez of Zero 7 fame, who collaborated with Pete on a brand new track. The album has been in progress since The Big Chill's inception in the mid 90s, though Pete has been kept pretty busy with all things Big Chill, so his music-making has certainly been a labour of love when he's been able to prioritise it. "This approach has certainly had its benefits", suggest Pete, "in that it's given time for the tracks to evolve naturally and draw on a wide variety of influences from certain time periods, ensuring that the end result shouldn't be tied to any short-term vagaries of fashion. My aim is to make timeless music that will still sound good in 30 years.

Feedback so far has been very positive :

“A timeless mellow mash up of all my favourite styles. Sublime” Rob Da Bank

“A beautiful album, which captures just about everything I love about music. It breathes beautifully, and totally reaches out to you and pulls you in. Gorgeous” Ben Mynott

“A magical and highly musical journey full of great arrangements with many cool and unexpected twists and turns along the way.”
Nick Luscombe

“An album that’s emotive as well as nicely provocative; in short a beautiful listen” Pathaan

“Great sunshine music” Phil Mison

“A really gorgeous album. Perfect music for chilling out” Df Tram

“It goes with me everywhere at the moment - a truly magical record”
Lol Hammond

Pete's track by track guide to the LP

1.The Otherworld - The first sound you hear on the album is The Swingle Singers’ dark and brooding a cappella intro, followed by a solid, funky groove laid down by Andy Gangadeen and Nick Cohen. There’s something of a John Barry influence here, with The Swingles counterpointing the melody alongside Dave Noble’s Floyd-esque slide guitar.

2. Rondo Mondo - A joyous hoedown of roots meets electronica – a bluesy groove, with Gangadeen and Cohen providing funky syncopation for a trombone and accordion led theme which develops into a jam with Jessica Laurens’ storming barrelhouse piano.

3. Musical Box - The classic winter’s fairy tail is remixed for the album, accentuating the haunting glockenspiel theme, simplistic rhythm box and live horns.

4. Rolling - Upbeat, evocative modern soul music, starting with dubbed horns and an off-kilter marching band, moving into a sunny strummed guitar-led instrumental. Neil Yates adds the flute solo, as it builds to a climax with a fiesta of brass, a joyous interplay between saxes and trumpets.

5. Mirage - A deep mysterious, panoramic soundscape conceived by Pete in Cairo around the time of The Big Chill’s landmark event in the city. The interplay between instruments is sparse and poignant, with Egyptian quarter-tone keyboards played by master musician Fathy Salama.

6. The Fire On The Mountain - Acts as an interlude, lifting the graceful classical string theme from ‘Go Forward’ as a backdrop to Alan James reading an excerpt from his piece ‘Fire’, written in Naxos.

7. State Of Grace - It’s hardly a secret that Pete rates the Mozez-inspired Zero 7 track ‘This World’ as one of the greatest songs ever written. This new track took shape as a musical and lyrical collaboration between the pair. It’s the album’s pivotal point. State Of Grace is about sacrifice, resolution, and hope - a spiritual for modern times.

8. Where Did You Go - An intimate lament for lost love, with Pete stepping forward to sing for the first time, with Boomclick Soundsystem’s Rosa Fernandez, backed by Dave ’Natureboy’ Noble’s sunny Spanish guitar.

9. Butterflies - Conceived on a hazy August day in the Llanthony valley on the Welsh borders, close to the Big Chill site in 1997. Pete then asked Andy Waterworth (London Elektricity, Instrumental) and Gill Morley (Echo) to play double bass and viola respectively, both parts complimenting the lazy pastoral Englishness of the composition.

10. Green Shade - Pete’s most ambitious musical exercise on the record. Written in three parts, starting with free-wheeling ambience over which Howard McGill plays some moody tenor sax, followed by a darker chord progression contrasting with simple acoustic piano and, which builds into Michael Mantler-esque solo codas from flute, and then sax with trumpets playing in unison, before the final massed percussion ensemble chases the fade.

11. Cumulonimbus - A minor key sky-gazer’s lament, starting with dreamy electric guitar picking from Dave Noble, before submerging itself in a shimmering wash of synths, with a simple piano part working with it.

12. Go Forward has already surfaced on Pete’s first EP, ‘Solar Powered’ and has already been hailed a classic. Starting with a mesmeric harp and ukulele exchange, the bass and drums then kick the groove into gear, which builds to the dubbed piano breakdown. It’s a fitting climax to Pete’s debut album.

issued in the UK on BIG chill recordings
cat no factor 18

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