COLLIDER PROJECT
LET THE MUSIC COLLIDE
Many influences collide. One musician.
Why Collider Project?
The name describes the music.
Christian has never been particularly interested in choosing between musical worlds. Different decades, different genres and completely different approaches to making music have always existed alongside one another.
The interesting part isn’t choosing between them.
It’s what happens when they collide.
One influence might be about songwriting. Another might be a sound, a rhythm, an attitude, an arrangement, a way of playing or simply the freedom an artist shows by refusing to stay in one place.
Collider Project grew out of that musical philosophy.
There is no set style to protect and no genre that every new song has to satisfy. A song can be intimate or confrontational, sparse or densely arranged, melodic, electronic, guitar-driven, rhythmic, dark, playful — or some mixture that doesn’t have an easily definable name.
The song decides what it needs.
But no fixed genre doesn’t mean no identity.
Across the changing musical styles, certain instincts keep returning: melody, rhythmic movement, instrumental interplay, voices that become part of the arrangement and words that have something to say. Whatever the subject — even when it is serious or challenging — a strong melody carries the song and gives people something to connect with and remember.
The instruments change. The atmosphere changes. Sometimes the music is immediately accessible; sometimes it reveals itself more gradually.
The song decides what it needs.
Yet the songs still belong together — connected by the musical personality behind them.
Much of that personality developed through years of playing with other musicians.
An important part of the road towards Collider Project was Ragazzi, the band Christian played in with Andy Clayton and Darren Pennington.
Andy was an exceptionally gifted guitarist: humble, intelligent, witty and capable of learning seemingly anything put in front of him. Darren brought natural musical instinct, enthusiasm and a huge personality to the music. Playing together allowed songs and ideas to be tried in a room rather than simply imagined at home.
Andy encouraged Christian to make an album after hearing the beginnings of what would become Everybody’s Right. Darren’s enthusiasm helped reinforce the feeling that these songs deserved to be properly recorded.
After Andy passed away, Ragazzi came to an end.
But what happened in that room didn’t disappear.
Songs including Time Wasting Time, Do You Know You, Only For You and First To Know had been played and developed during that period, and something of the spirit Christian found playing with Andy and Darren remained when he began making the first Collider Project records.
Collider Project finally brought together ideas that had been developing for years: songwriting, playing, recording, experimentation and the refusal to decide that music has to belong in one particular box.
Everybody’s Right established the project’s musical breadth.
Beautiful continued exploring that freedom, moving between different musical and emotional worlds without abandoning the identity that connects them.
And the third album is taking shape now.
Many influences collide. One musician.
