"The history of "Tylas Cyndrome" ( the origin of the name is another story altogether!) goes back over 40 years ago, to when myself (guitar, piano), Alan Ford (guitar) and Les Sims (drums, guitar) were teenagers and started to play music together. Making rough recordings of songs we'd written on an Akai 4000DS 4 track tape recorder, we dreamed of recording an album of our own music - but life moves on and our lives followed different paths.

In 2009, following a chance meeting via a Friends Reunited website, the three of us met up again. I played them a few EM ideas I had been working on and asked for their feedback. With these pieces I had wanted to go back to my youth when I used to listen to the electronic music in the pop charts. There was “Magic fly” by Space and “Popcorn” by Hot Butter. Then of course there was “Oxygene” by Jean Michel Jarre and “Chariots of fire” by Vangelis. All fairly simple songs but with memorable melody lines that I really loved. I wanted to go some way towards that kind of idea in these songs with a more verse/chorus type structure and simple melodies. 

Les and Alan agreed that we should try to develop and record these ideas and see what happened.

Recording
That's when the problems started for me! Instead of just sitting in my studio, I had to try and record drums and acoustic guitar - which I had never attempted before. Fortunately, Les plays an electronic drum kit - so we recorded the main drum tracks onto a laptop, then transferred the midi via EZ Drummer to get acoustic and electronic drum and percussion sounds.

Alan and I talked about how to integrate the guitar with the electronic music sound. We decided to swap the guitar and synth parts over and have the guitar play slower melodic lines while the synth was used for the faster guitar parts. This meant the guitar was used for more than just a token guitar solo in each track. With that in mind we recorded acoustic and electric guitar in my small home studio.

Finally, acoustic drums and guitars were recorded in a small rehearsal studio (where the video for the title track "Phoenix Arising" was filmed) and extra keyboard parts were dropped in.

I carried out more sound design for this recording than I've ever done before - layering synth sounds, creating new, playing recordings backwards, sampling homemade effects (an umbrella was used on one track!). 

It should then have been a simple case of mixing down the tracks. How wrong I was!!! I hadn't figured on a bi-polar-psycho-hormonal computer which was hell bent on causing as many problems as possible.... and then some more!

Overheating
The majority of the recording involved 24 tracks of audio and soft synths. This caused issues as the computer struggled to cope. I had to keep a desktop fan running, which meant extra noise in the studio when mixing. Then the computer started crashing and losing data. Diagnosis - a faulty hard drive! On another occasion, whilst trying to record Alan's guitar, the computer switched off completely and refused to boot up again. It was absolutely fine the next day..... or was it?

Chaos Theory
The computer would change the sounds on the soft synths and refuse to mix them down correctly. Every time, after a mix, it would sound different. I had to choose the best mixdown of that synth and sample the sound to keep it the same. It once lost a sound that I had spent hours programming and could not reproduce exactly. Fortunately I’d sampled it on an earlier take and was forced to use that version. Suffice to say that I was not happy and the computer nearly found itself flying out of the nearest window!

Hard drive 
The main hard drive I was using crashed completely and had to be replaced, causing yet more delays. Thankfully, as I was so paranoid by this time, everything was backed up – twice.

Call in the medics
I hadn’t been in the best of health. The RSI in my ‘mouse’ arm had been bad. Recurring back problems meant that sometimes I wasn’t able to sit at the desk at all. By kneeling on the floor I managed to get four of eight tracks mixed, reviewed and amended. The second batch of four followed a similar pattern. It became a fight between me and the computer that I refused to lose, even after I fell down the stairs at home on one occasion.

The tracks were circulated to Les and Alan who then made valid structural comments. A number of the tracks were then rearranged and altered in length. New things were added to tracks right up until the last minute as it is very difficult when you’re creating to know when to stop. 

Despite the technical issues, the illness, and the depression (as a result of being ill), it has definitely been one of the most challenging, rewarding, and enjoyable experiences of my life. I hope some of that comes through in the music.

All three of us agree that it was the most enjoyable and challenging thing we have ever done together - and, ultimately, we achieved our ambition from 40 years ago."