Half Life – whose idea was this?

The idea for Phil’s composition Half Life came from his stepson Kyle who you all know as the webmaster for this website. You can see him here, modelling the T-shirt that was for sale at the tribute concert ‘A Life in Music’ we held for Phil after his death at the Vortex in January 2019. Kyle had challenged Phil to write a piece of ska – or is it reggae? It was In1995 when Phil wrote this piece, Half Life, which was on the setlist for In Cahoots gigs throughout the nineties in England,  France, Holland & Belgium and in Japan at the Love Generation Festival in2001. You can hear it on the CD Parallel track 4. Phil had initially wanted to call this CD Half Life but was talked out of it by Benjamin Lefevre who didn’t like the name and thought it would put people off buying the CD. I think the name  refers to radioactivity- the half life of strontium 90. Phil gave several of his pieces scientific names. Take for instance Red Shift which is a key concept for astronomers. The term can be understood literally when the wavelength of light is stretched, so the light is seen as ‘shifted’ towards the red part of the spectrum. Something similar happens to sound waves when a source of sound moves relative to an observer. Observe as well the cover of the CD Mind over matter which uses a picture taken from inside the Hadron Collider and the discovery of the Higgs boson. And how about Recent Discoveries?
Half Life was recorded at Hoxton Studios at the end of May and the beginning of July 1996 for In Cahoot’s CD Parallel. Produced by Phil and engineered, mixed and co-produced by Phil’s great friend Benj Lefevre.