Life Still Beautiful

Music comes from many different places. Some of it comes from happy accidents; a lot of it comes from the programmed, laboratory environment of a hit factory. Very occasionally, great pop music comes from somewhere deeper within the soul. So it is with The Orange Lights. Their epic, widescreen guitar soul has melodies that scare the sky and words that come laden with meaning and tug at the heartstrings. One listen and there's every chance you'll be hooked. This was definitely the case for fabled Coldplay producer Ken Nelson, who ignored the pile of lucrative offers from major artists and chose instead to work with The Orange Lights when they were still unsigned. Nelson felt - and responded to - the band's music and their passion. It was a similar case for Richard Ashcroft producer Chris Potter, who worked on the album initially, and Chris Lord-Alge, the LA-based award-winning mix engineer who polished the record with his trademark 3D sound.

It's been a similar tale as the band have begun making live appearances: blowing people away as far apart (geographically and spiritually) as Newcastle, Los Angeles (where they appeared at Musexpo, LA's In The City) and Ibiza (Ibiza Rocks supporting the Editors, and broadcast on Channel 4). When the band performed acoustically in front of the BPI / The Brits committee at an industry gathering at The Staples Center in LA, Steve Redmond stated: "I was knocked out. Four out-of-the-box radio records".

Co-creator of The Orange Lights is Newcastle-based songwriter Paul Tucker, who had had considerable past success but was at a loose end when he came across Nottingham-born Jay after a mate gave him a CD. At the time he'd just been looking for a guitar player, but was struck not just by Jay's distinctive fretwork, but that voice. It sounded then as it still sounds now: wounded, fragile but powerful, soulful. "I was blown away, transported," says Paul. "There was this huge landscape of guitar... and somebody singing. I just had to meet this guy." Even now, Paul is in raptures as he tries to describe what it felt like when he heard that voice for the first time. "It was very warm... but there was something almost ghostly about it."