Andy Taylor and Chemia - new single
New Andy Taylor collaboration! Co-writes and produces new album with Chemia.
In early March this year, Cherry Lipstick commented on the resurfacing of our old mucker Andy Taylor in our lives. He had just come off the back of a very successful one-off show at the 100 Club with Reef in London.
Reef are celebrating their 25th anniversary in 2020 and so they, with Andy, were planning an active 2020.
Andy arranged a mini-tour of the UK in May, which got cancelled by the pandemic - but he teased us with a tweet of a Duran-heavy set list (Hold Back the Rain, Save A Prayer, Careless Memories, HLTW / Wild Boys). This followed his infamous cry at the end of Wild Boys / Hungry Like The Wolf at the 100 Club: “you didn’t think we would – but I did it – and we will again!”
Undaunted, Andy tried to tour the UK again this summer (this week, in fact) with a drive-in show. After announcing tickets, you could tell he was gutted to find it cancelled as well.
And now there’s today’s announcement. Andy has co-written and produced Chemia’s new single, Modern Times.
Chemia are Polish rockers, who’ve going since 2010. They have claimed they’ve been inspired by the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and grunge. Their sound is based around loud riffs, growling vocals, and drums thumping to introduce a rockin’ chorus. That's tended to be an effective brew for a reason.
Modern Times adds a heavy country guitar twang to this mould, and is none the worse for it. The video is a veritable rock road-movie cliché - grizzled veterans cruising the South West with Monument Valley as the backdrop in a convertible, with the road shooting off into the distance. Originality - or subtlety - doesn't have to be that great. There’s a very happy place to find when you (metaphorically) grab a beer, hit the road and wallow in said cliché. These days when we're all stuck at home, it does rather hit the mark.
In terms of Andy’s direction, it’s comfortably in the zone shaped by the second Power Station album, Reef and his own Love Or Liberation. He seems very pleased to be back and busy.
Today’s press release, kindly provided to Cherry Lipstick by Andy’s manager Seven Webster, promotes the collaboration thus:
Chemia guitarist “W” Balczun says, “Working with Andy was a fantastic adventure and a great honour for all of us. We loved his work with both Duran Duran and The Power Station as well as his solo albums, especially ‘Thunder’. So to have him co-write and produce our new album was an amazing experience, and for all of us it was simply a dream come true. His attention to detail is second to none and we all learned so much from working with him and we cannot wait for everyone to hear it."
Chemia frontman and singer Lukasz (Luke) Drapala of the Warsaw-based rock band went on to add, “All in all, last year was amazing for us. We ended the year touring mainland Europe with Hanoi Rocks’ frontman Michael Monroe and his all-star band, as well as doing a stadium tour of the Ukraine with Antytila and to ice the cake we cut our best album to date with Andy Taylor. We also got to play one very special show with Andy Taylor and the guys from Reef in Milton Keynes.”
The single was engineered by Darren Jones, whose engineer and mixer credits include working on Stormzy’s recent platinum-selling single ‘Vossi Bop’. After this, the track was mastered at Abbey Road by Sean Magee (who was part of the Grammy award winning team best known for remastering the Beatles’ back catalogue).
Modern Times video: