Speck of Gold came out in 2003. However, I actually started the track in 2001 on the day after the horrors of 9/11. Throughout that morning I was demoing the (then) new Pioneer CDJ 1000 at Earls Court Plasa. Naturally, the event was shut down as soon as the awful news hit the UK and I caught the train home.

Whenever some strong emotions hit it has always been my practice to translate them into music so the morning after I sat down in the studio to attempt to expurgate the horror of that cruel event. No surprise therefore, that the track was by far the darkest I had ever even considered releasing. And I do mean very dark.

I sent the track to Cathy Battistessa hoping that her golden voice would add some much needed light to the track, but, who was I fooling? Of course she felt the same way so her vocals, although beautiful, had a touch of bleakness that just compounded the mood of the piece.

I decided that I needed to re address the backing track to make it lighter. I felt the solution to the problem lay in achieving juxtaposition. After several attempts over the next 18 months, (which were all huge fails), I decided to revisit the vocals and start again from scratch. By writing around Cathy’s “Speck oF Gold”vocals and nothing else, the track that had thus far eluded me, appeared.

After a week it was ready to go into production and became the title track of the album Afterlife -“Speck Of Gold”

“…hope is all we have”…

Speck Of Gold now has a 2023 Edit version.

One Love

Steve