We met up to play together because we were both depping for a Souly covers outfit called 'The Red Lemons' this was about 1992 I think. I said "Oi, it's you", and pointed rather rudely. I then went on to explain that I 'knew who he was'  -sinister eh?  Actually no, it's just that Dave had been on a session playing bass where I was similarly sessioning keys. The way he played/dealt with stuff on that session was enough to give me the clue, even though he was only in the building for about an hour! Almost immediately we swapped ideas, and copies of previous work, and began to write together. We 'appeared' on each other's then current work, and finally began to write loads of stuff all the time in the mid 90's. We have currently worked with, and for, countless stars big and small, in the marvellous musical firmament. Evidence of which is all over this site, and the latest of which can be found by following this link to 'Decent Pie's Thought Blog'

We've got a bit of a musical telepathy thing going on, both in a studio and for live work. This is I think, based on a very similar perception of what's right for any given piece, whether our own or in any other genre. [We listen to em all... know any new ones?] We also do it all ourselves; write, arrange, perform, engineer, produce and record, webmaster, fund and fret over.

It's difficult to know where to start... but I'm pretty sure that somewhere in an hyper-universe, a web was laid across the aeons. Later, by virtue of some strange incarnation indeed, the same group of itinerant souls, forever fractally reproducing their swirling dance through time, crossed paths. When you spend your whole life dealing with an underlying bipolarity, that ebbs and flows with it's own agenda. With an attention to detail that others may see as obsessive, but to you is still lacking, and with a uniquely refined and subtley delineated model in your head of what music should sound like, you don't exactly EVER expect to meet ANYONE that you could EVER let ANYWHERE NEAR your art. Then one day, when you're least expecting it, something weird and wonderful happens. For the first time in your whole working life, another spirit in the room is vibrating at the same frequency. This has far-reaching consequences. At some meta-level or another, a switch is thrown, an 0 becomes a 1. A synapse surges in to life, and a chaotic cascade ensues. A previously dormant gene is activated, and your bio-sono-luminescence compares it's hue. A strange attractor that Lorentz himself would be proud of, emerges from the background hum, and there you are. Decent Pie.

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For me it could have been the day [though there have been many others since] that Dave strolled up to me, as I sweated against fatigue and the clock to get, of all f*ckin' things, a church bell overdub down. I was over-concentrating and had just uttered the words "aww jus' forget it" to the engineer, knowing that really there was an ideal part that I was searching for, that it was important, but that I was overstepping the mark to be still recording last minute dubs. The others, Dave included, were packed down and carrying gear out through the control room. You see when you're into music the way we are, your ears never stop. He had obviously been listening to me struggle as he was walking in and out with amps, and on hearing me ready to quit, simply put down his bass guitar, walked over to the board, and played the ABSOLUTELY NOTE-PERFECT 100% CORRECT part that I had been unsuccessfully trying to translate from my brain to my fingers. In other words he had read my [musical] mind PERFECTLY, and had infact been able to sort out the fuddle in my crust, and simply amble over and execute the thing first go. Now this in itself is not such an unusual phenomenon in music. Infact we ourselves here at DPP do it all the time for other artists. At it's best, unencumbered by any unnecessary baggage, it is the DEFINITION of PRODUCTION. It's just that in all those years of working and doing similar things for other artists, it REALLY never occurred to me that there might ever be ANYONE out there capable of tuning in so perfectly to my musical brain. To the point where they could do that service for me. Don't forget, I NEVER, EVER expected to meet ANYONE that I could EVER let ANYWHERE NEAR my art.

When you add in the fact that everything above could actually have been written by either of us, and that we share the same mystery, the same ideal, the same bipolarity even. The same vision of that indefinable 'thing', that 'notion without form' that all art aspires to, you may just begin to get some idea of how deeply our songs are felt. Our co-writtren repertoire, -I've counted them recently -there were umpteen, is unbounded by style or form restrictions of any kind, and with the advent of The Maniac, is blossoming into existence all sorts of new and interesting flowers. The solo and side project work from both of us individually, continues to provide a wider canvas, further resources for a live set, and enough distraction to fuel the creative fires for yet more original work, and on and on. The screenplays are flying - the DVD's are coming. Originality is not dead - it just smells funny.