benjaminkoll

On The Beach (1994 Demo)

Added 2023-12-22 18:21:41 +0000 UTC

Hey guys, I just realized that I hadn't republished this demo, which may be the most important one of all, because it helped me realize that I could actually have a career as a singer back in 1994. I had to take it down in June 2022 because of a data leak. I hope it will stay here for a long time.

Now the story behind the demo:

The version you're listening to is the first time I recorded this beautiful song by Chris Rea. It was 1993 and a big producer in Spain met me in a hotel in Alicante (Spain) while scouting for new talent. After talking for an hour, he asked me to come back to my studio in Valencia and challenged me to arrange and record this song in front of him as a test. He didn't really believe that I was capable of playing all the instruments, singing and recording myself. So he came to my studio in Valencia and watched me make this demo from scratch in about four or five hours.

The vocals are raw, there's no digital processing on the voice because I was only allowed to record it twice, so it can be considered a live performance. The arrangement is a loose jazz version of the original, and I have to admit that I cheated a bit... I used parts of a midi file (for those of you who don't know what a midi file is, it's like a digital sheet music) as the basis for some of the tracks (it was the only way I could go that fast), but the guy didn't mind because everyone was using them at the time (it's like using a calculator during a hard math exam, for example). He was happy with the result and we moved on to the next phase, but that's another story...

Thanks for listening! 😘❤️