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A Simple Act Of Faith (2015) - Cymande - All About the Album

Could there be a fifth record in the band's development someday? Quite possibly... Time will tell!

John Schroeder, Alan Florence, and Isy Clark: Recording a Simple Act of Faith

When iconic funk band Cymande returned to the studio to record A Simple Act Of Faith, they insisted on hiring the same production team they had 41 years earlier... Yes, yes! Their fourth studio album was released four decades and one year after its predecessor, Promised Heights, first hit shop shelves in 1974. Six core members from the band's original line-up worked on the record, along with the studio team of producer John Schroeder and engineer Alan Florence.

Cymande: Cult pioneers of '70s funk-soul.

You've probably heard Cymande's early '70s music sampled by hip hop and rap artists such as The Sugarhill Gang, De La Soul, Wu Tang Clan, Gang Starr, MC Solaar, Ruthless Rap Assassins and Fugees... And these are just some of the hundreds of groups that have used Cymande's grooves, basslines and beats to create their own tracks.

Such a connection with hip-hop first appealed to sound engineer Isy Clark, who owns Grange Farm Studio in Norfolk, where A Simple Act Of Faith was recorded. Isy still remembers the day Alan Florence and John Schroeder first visited Grange Farm in 2010 to appreciate the setting and atmosphere of the place:

"I worked a lot with hip-hop in the 90s, so I really knew Cymande from their samples! When I listened to their early albums, I was like, 'Oh my God!'"

Under the overarching atmosphere of funk and soul, the band Cymande combined a kaleidoscope of different influences... And their first three albums (Cymande (1972), Second Time Round (1973) and Promised Heights (1974)) not only inspired rap and hip-hop artists, but also achieved quite a bit of success in their own right! Especially the eponymous debut and its lead single "The Message".

As for the new album, it reunites the original line-up of Cymande! However, without Joey D... His vocal duties were shared by band leaders Steve Scipio and Patrick Patterson.

"We also had some African influences," adds Steve Scipio. "Patrick and I played with a Nigerian band called Ginger Johnson's African Drummers, so we were influenced by some of them. African music was quite popular at the time with Osibisa and Assagai and all those bands that were Afro-rock. There was also the Caribbean influence with calypso and at that time you had ska rhythms and then rasta... We consciously decided not to do covers and it was a conscious choice because we wanted to make original music. We wanted to make different music..."

 

"I think a lot of things influenced the flavour of our music," says Patrick. "But we didn't sit around and think, "What are we trying to do... We need to bring these different styles of music together!" It was just an expression of all of our experiences, musically and personally..."

The beginning of the journey...

Shortly after Cymande began performing in London, they met producer John Schroeder in the basement of a club in Soho where they were rehearsing. By 1971, Schroeder had already achieved considerable success! In the early 1960s, while working as an assistant manager for Colombia Records, John met 13-year-old singer Helen Shapiro, for whom he wrote a series of hits, including "Walkin' Back To Happiness". As A&R manager at London's independent label Oriole Records, Schroeder first obtained licensing rights to release Tamla Motown recordings in the UK (although getting British DJs to play American soul in 1962 and 1963 proved very difficult!).

The band Cymande at the beginning of their career...
The band Cymande at the beginning of their career...

"I was impressed by the band's infectious rhythm," said Schroeder, who founded the British Cymande label on Alaska Records in 1972 after working for eight years as manager of Pye's Piccadilly Records. "I think the essence of Cymande is that their music is exciting rhythmically and melodically... When I first heard them play, I thought, "We'll take them into the studio and try something!" I think I specifically picked two or three songs to take them into the studio, one of them was a track called "The Message". We basically made a demo that I put on a cassette tape."

"...I then sent this cassette to the MIDEM music festival in France. I had a particularly good contact with a guy called Marvin Schlachter, who ran Janus Records - he was also involved with Chess Records in the States. Marvin asked me what I was doing now, and I said: "I've just joined a really good black band and we've recorded two or three tracks." He said: "Can I hear that?" So I gave him the tape and he took it back to the States with him. I thought that was it, but three weeks later I got a telegram saying, "Love these tracks! I want to release The Message..." And that was the beginning... The Message ended up being an underground hit on American college radio. Its popularity then began to grow like a snowball, and soon it was on both the R&B and national charts. Cymande were the first British black band to conquer America! Next thing I knew, they were touring America with Al Green! I remember seeing them in Philadelphia, and they were playing at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, and then recording at Chess Studios... That was the beginning of a great relationship I had with that band! And here we are working together again, 40 years later... It's magic..."

Old and new

Despite an unexpected level of interest in the US, Cymande never really made it in the UK... Guitarist Patrick and bassist Steve went on to build successful careers in law in the following decades! But never completely turned their backs on music... Patrick was a member of 80s soul troupe View From The Hill, while Steve spent the late 70s and early 80s playing in London's famous exiled South African outfit Jabula. So why, 41 years after Promised Heights, was it necessary to record another album?

"It's unfinished business," Patterson and Scipio say in unison, after which Patrick continues, "That very feeling when you leave something behind but you still have something to say, something to comment on and add to..."

 

"We didn't want to come back and do the same thing as the Monkees along with other old bands who come back on stage and just say, 'We're here and we're here to do all this old stuff.' We said, "No, if we're coming back, we have to come back with an album!" It was a difficult task for us... You want to keep some of what you had with the first three albums, but at the same time you don't want to do what you did in the '70s, because people might say, "What are you doing? You never got out of those years?!" So, we tried to combine what we did in the '70s with what we want to do now to get a kind of modern Cymande sound..."

What was the recording process for A Simple Act Of Faith like?

It all started around 2007, when Steve and Patrick started talking seriously about the possibility of putting together what would later become A Simple Act Of Faith. The first step was to see if the other four core members of the band would embrace the idea. Drummer Sam Kelly, percussionist Pablo Gonzalez and saxophonist Mike Rose have continued to make music over the years. Kelly is a prolific professional and bandleader who has played drums for artists such as Robert Plant, Gary Moore, Roger Chapman, Billy Ocean and Imelda May... All eventually agreed to take part in both the recording of the new album and future tours! Unfortunately, Cymande's main vocalist from their 70's heyday, Joey Dee, was no longer alive... It was for this reason that Steve and Patrick decided to share vocal duties with the support of Pablo.

The next step was to convince John Schroeder to take the reins of production again!

"John is an integral part of everything we've done! Not just in terms of his love for the band, but his commitment to it," explains Patterson. "When we met, John fell in love with our music... He put all his energy into moving the project forward. He was very supportive and we felt the same way when we went back and started talking to him about the new project. He was so excited... He's always been very important to us... And in retrospect, it's clear: he's the seventh member of Cymande. And Alan Florence as an engineer was also very important. Alan and John have a great understanding of the Cymande sound and also understand us as people..."

Now let's hear from John himself:

"I was a bit worried when I was first asked about it!" - he laughs. "They hadn't played together for 40 years, and they didn't have a vocalist! I didn't say I didn't think we could do it... But I was definitely concerned about it. However, then I started listening to the material - it was a lot of songs! If I hadn't heard the strong material, I don't think we could have done it. But we did, and we found 10 great tracks! For me, the magic of this band starts with what they do with the material they write... They take the songs to a small demo studio, record the tracks and create feelings in the music. They always have little leads: bass lines, lead guitar and keyboards... These are the little tricks in the songs that I've listened to over and over again..."

The actual recording sessions for A Simple Act Of Faith began at Monkey Puzzle House in Suffolk towards the end of 2010. Later, in 2011, they continued with Isy Clark at Grange Farm Studios in Norfolk. Work continued through 2012... And the mixing itself wasn't completed until April 2013. One of the main reasons the sessions were so protracted proved to be the challenge of getting all the members of Cymande together in the studio at the same time due to their busy schedules each.

From the beginning, John Schroeder, Alan Florence and the band insisted on recording the album exactly as they had done in the early '70s: all together in the same room, using the same methods they had used then:

"I know the boys' old sound very well, of course. And this time we approached the microphone exactly the same way we did when recording their early albums," says Alan. "I always went into the studio the moment the boys started their run-through so I could hear what they were playing in there and get an idea of the sound. I knew the sound we were looking for on each instrument, so I had to let Isi know. The microphones were chosen based on that. You have to create the sound in the studio first to get it right, because then you have less work to do. That's the secret!"

 

"John and Alan were keen to make this record like they did in the 60s and 70s... And I think the band were also keen to get back to their roots in terms of sound... It was a really interesting process because it was very different to a lot of records that are made today. Almost everything was recorded live, with only overlapping vocals and brass" - recalls Isy Clark.

Result

So, 41 years after their third album, Cymande finally released A Simple Act Of Faith at the end of November 2015. Could there be a fifth record in the band's pipeline someday? Quite possibly... Time will tell!

"If we're still going to be alive, why not!" laughs Steve Scipio. "A lot of people know of us as a 70s band. But we're trying to gradually bring them into Cymande's music as a 2015 band, not a 1975 band... And once we do that, I think it'll give us a bit more freedom with the next album!"

"...I would like to believe that in the future we will have the support of old fans and the continued support of new fans..."

One last thing...

What particularly impressed engineer Isy Clark was the way Cymande worked on the arrangements at Grange Farm.

"There's one thing I really noticed the first day they got here, and it continued throughout the session," Clark recalls. "We set up, we had sound, they talked to each other. Then, all of a sudden, they just started playing and it was perfect... Pretty much everything was captured from the first or second take. Some bands will come in and jam at sessions a million times, but Cymande played two or four bars! I thought it was strange at first because I wasn't used to that approach..."

Tracks

Well, and, directly, the tracks themselves from the album A Simple Act Of Faith:

"Everybody Turn Rasta"

"Do It (This Time with Feeling)"

"Crazy Game."

"Sea of Tears"

"All or Nothing."

"No Weeping."

"God's Highway"

"A Moment for Reflection"

"A Simple Act of Faith"

"Everybody's Doing Alright"

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