Both Claire and Phil worked for EMI as engineers. Claire being a tape mastering engineer and Phil being a studio engineer. Phil went on to become chief engineer of EMI (SA) and chief engineer at Downtown studios (Gallo Africa).
Hailing from South Africa, CANAMII was a studio-based project, where a few principal members recorded an entire album utilizing outside musicians as needed. The main members in this case were Phil Nel (keyboards) and Claire Whittaker (vocals), and soon after they started working on the project, Paul Woodley (guitars) got heavily involved as well.
Due to Phil and Claire's full time job as studio engineers they were able to use the recording studios of EMI without cost - the label considered this project as good training - and whenever the studio wasn't booked and the threesome had spare time simultanously they used the opportunity to work on this project. Various musicians were brought in as needed, and in 1980 it was ready to be released.
A band name was constructed by assembling selected syllables from the star signs of Phil and Claire - Cancer and Gemini. The album was named Concept and issued in 1980, and turned out to be the sole production of this project.
Although not originally part of the initial concept Paul Woodley was asked to join the project because of he’s jazz/rock influenced guitar playing as can be heard on the tracks Afrock, Phantom Players, And the Moon Be As Bright. Claire’s vocal style was very much influenced by Annie Haslam from the band Renaissance. Claire also had very strong 70’s folk influence in her vocal style.Phil’s forte’ was in programming synths such as the Synclavier, Fairlight, Jupiter 4, Korg, Moog, RMI and the ARP.
Phil also has grade 8 classical piano (Royal Schools of Music) and he’s major musical influence was Emerson, Lake and Palmer, especially ELP’s LP release Tarkus as can be heard on the Canimi Concept tracks Toccata and Tri. Phil’s other influences were Rick Wakeman, Yes and King Crimson along with the Russian classical composers such as Rimsky Korsakov, Mussorgsky and Khachaturian.
Tim Kensella, a long time friend of both Phil and Claire was asked to do the vocals on the track Spiral. This track also features the RMI synth. Short of one track to complete the LP, Phil, Claire and Paul spent an entire night in EMI studios and wrote the track Children, using just guitar, a Jupiter 4 synth and the Dr Rhythm drum box.
Musicians:
Philip Nel - Keyboards
Paul Woodley - Guitar
Claire Whittaker - Vocals
Mickey Woitynek - Guitar
Ashley Kelly - Bass
Herman Eugster, Kendall Kay, Tony Moore - Drums
Tim Kensella - Vocals
Concept (1980 - full album): https://youtu.be/N6VY8eJAJd4
No comments:
Post a Comment