Dave Lee has been releasing electronic music under many different pseudonyms for over 40 years, and his latest project as AC Soul Symphony may be his biggest undertaking yet. I was able to speak with Dave about his latest creation Metamorphosis, its conception, and what is next for Mr. Lee.
We have seen the AC Soul Symphony name a few times in the last three
years. How long have you been releasing music under that moniker?
AC Soul Symphony, as a name for me releasing music, started in the mid-2000s – I put out three 12-inches which did have the strings to the fore, but they were more vocal disco house songs that also could have come out under other aliases I use like Prospect Park or Mistura. In theory, these older releases could have fit on this album musically, though they are old and would have needed updating, and I didn’t want to do that.
AC started properly as an identity with a specific sound with “Manhattan Skyline” (originally from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack) in 2020 – a personal fave of mine and one of the lesser-known tracks from the best-selling soundtrack of all time. I always loved this TV theme-like string-heavy track, but there were things about it I wasn’t crazy about that would stop me from playing it as a DJ, so I took the bits that I really liked and pretty much recreated them, but also wrote some new sections that went with the original parts. The idea being that I tried to make the version I’d love to discover on some rare library album.
Over the years I’ve been making music, I’ve built up long-standing relationships with many great musicians, so I felt that doing a mainly instrumental project would give more space for these amazing live players to really be at the forefront. When I produce a club track I generally try to keep it to 6/7 minutes, as realistically most DJs won’t play any more than that, but for the AC LP, I made the songs as long as felt right musically. Some of the album are new versions of some of my favourite TV themes, but my own take on these classic tracks with some new ideas, a few disco soul faves I would have liked to remix, plus some original tracks, like the title track.
Now that the record has been in the world for a couple of weeks, how has the public
response been?
The response has been great from people who are deeply into disco and soul music,
some of whom are probably already fans of what I do. You don’t know how many
people are going to hear it when you release something – there’s so much new
music made these days and getting it heard by people is difficult. Though I play them
is my own sets I’m aware these tracks aren’t all super dancefloor friendly and easy to
program in a DJ set, but I wasn’t producing it for those reasons – I just wanted to
make music I’d like to listen to myself, so yeah – I’m pleased with the outcome of the
project and happy with the reaction.
The project is very personal in its inspiration. How long did you spend
putting the ideas together before you started the recording process?
Normally, when I’m making an album, I don’t start all the tracks together. I’ll have a
list of ideas on my phone. I’ll start doing a few basic demos and find some of them
work, some don’t. I might keep trying to make certain tracks work if I feel strongly
they have potential or give up on them in the short term and start new ones. So it’s a
constant whittling process. I’ll get to the point where I’ve got about 6 or 7 tracks that I
believe are album-worthy and take stock of what I have/don’t have – in terms of a
balance of tempos, styles, and remakes versus originals. I will try and move forward
with the ones that I think are goers but when I get musicians like Tony Remy or
Julian Crampton into the studio I always wait until I have 3 or 4 songs for them to
play on. I also might already have stuff on the hard drive I can use, for example, “It’s
Got To Be Love” was recorded with the singer about 5 years ago and though I liked
the result, I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I knew it needed real strings but at the
time, that wasn’t affordable for a single song, so when I started the AC album I
thought it would work well as part of this project musically and logistically.
“The New Avengers” was the first one that I started specifically for this
album and wrote the parts with the knowledge I would eventually be recording live
strings for it.
One of the things about this sort of musician-based production is that you have to
have an imagination – a vision – of how it’s all going to sound when it’s all put
together and you have all the bits of the jigsaw. The strings you’ve written are
performed by an orchestra, the live percussion and guitar are adding the rhythm, and
all these performances will contribute a little bit to the overall sound. When the song
is started on imitation midi instruments it probably won’t sound great, but you need to
have confidence in the basic harmony of the parts.
Are there any plans to do any live shows with the symphony to support the
project?
I’d love to, but it’s such an expensive process that you have to be absolutely sure that the
demand is there to create enough tour dates so that you can justify it all. We did it with
Sunburst Band and that was difficult enough with a much smaller lineup. You’d need to be
filling the Royal Albert Hall to make AC live viable. A lot of work goes into writing a show for
that many musicians, and I wouldn’t want to compromise on the main aspects of the project
by relying on major parts of the music (like the strings) being pre-recorded and run from a
laptop. This means there would be a large amount of personnel, at least 20. If you’re touring
that’s a lot of flights and hotel rooms, it just wouldn’t be commercially viable – so it’s unlikely
to happen any time soon, unfortunately.
With such an ambitious project under your belt, what’s next for Dave Lee?
In the short term, I have a few singles and remixes being released over the next couple
of months – I’ve just remixed Jamiroquai’s “Little L” and another classic disco record
“Spacer” by Sheila B. Devotion, produced by Chic – both records I bought as a punter,
so that’s always nice.
I’m always originating music – the next big album project is
called London Detroit by Dave & Maurissa. It’s with a singer from Detroit called
Maurissa Rose who came over about a year ago to work with me and we wrote an
album together. I’ve been putting the finishing touches to that over the last year or so
– it’s a mixture of house, soul, mid-tempo disco, and slow electro/boogie-type sounds.
Maurissa sounds like a cross between Patrice Rushen and a singer I used to work
with a lot, who sadly died, Dianne Charlemagne. That’ll be out mid-2024. Maybe I’ll do
another AC Soul Symphony album, but that’s a while off. I will say whilst I’m alive
and able to go to the studio, there will always be music from me.
Dance music lover, Mid-Century Vintage Shop Owner, Magnetic Magazine Disco & Funk Chart Editor.
