Album: Producer
Artist: Chris Braide
2026 Bandcamp
Digital

Chris Braide: vocals, piano, keyboard, guitar, bass, production
Tim Weller: drums
Lee Pomeroy: bass
Andy Hodge: bass
Dave Bainbridge: guitars
Josh Bowale: choir


Produced by Braide
Mastered by Jason Mitchell


Tracks:
1. "Freeway" (4:27)
2. "Waiting for the Right Time" (4:31)
3. "Your Life" (4:12)
4. "Man on the Moon" (4:01)
5. "Every Single Night in Jamaica" (3:44)
6. "Stay Elaine" (3:29)
7. "Broadway" (2:06)
8. "Home" (4:24)
9. "Watching You Out There" (2:54)
10. "You And I" (3:39)
11. "Summer Rain" (3:42)
12. "Man on the Moon (Reprise)" (2:48)

No writing credits are given, but elsewhere the material is credited to Braide/Lol Creme/Trevor Horn/Steve Lipson/Ash Soan


Notes (****): This is a long and somewhat puzzling story. In the mid-2000s, The Producers was formed as a way of playing music live by Trevor Horn, Steve Lipson, Lol Creme, Ash Soan and Chris Braide. The band started writing new material and started recording an album in 2006 at the Basing Street Studios in London. Sessions later moved to Hook End Manor, with the bulk of the material seemingly finished in 2007. An album release was announced, originally under the name Studio 1, but to go through a number of name changes. Braide contributed vocals and piano and was one of the main songwriters. Howevere, he was announced in early 2009 as having formally left the band due to work commitments, although he continued to work with them through to 2010. In the liner notes to this release, Braide just describes himself working on the project from 2006-10. Braide moved to the US in 2011. Horn, as his way, kept working on the album for some time, partly replacing Braide's vocals and keyboard parts. Horn brought in Geoff Downes to do new keys, which I think was not long before Downes and Braide started collaborating as the Downes Braide Association (DBA). The album was eventually released in 2012 as Made in Basing Street.

Braide was unhappy with that delay and what Horn did with the album. In the liner notes here, he writes
When Made in Basing Street was eventually released in 2012, it had evolved considerably from the album Braide had originally recorded. His lead vocals had been replaced with performances by another singer, and his name was no longer presented on the front cover as part of the band line-up.

The songs survived, but the original voice through which many of them had first been written and developed was largely absent from the released record.
However, a box set, called Producers, was released in 2024 with a new 2023 mix by Lipson that appears to have been largely based on the 2007/8 recording sessions with the original quintet, plus a bunch of bonus tracks with further material from those sessions. Braide appeared to be pleased by this release. But it appears the situation remained unresolved in his mind. Braide released various Producers-related material on Bandcamp, starting in Dec 2025 with a release of the 2007 Producers mixes, along with a digital single of "Man on the Moon" with various mixes. An early live performance by The Producers of "Owner of a Lonely Heart" was also included on his Yes covers EP Wonderous Stories.

At the end of Dec 2025, he released a solo re-recording of "Freeway" as a digital single, with two more digital singles with alternate mixes of that following in early 2026. This re-visiting of earlier material wasn't confined to The Producers. Braide released a lot of material on Bandcamp in 2025/6, with various solo re-recordings or archival early versions of his songs, like his original recording of "Unstoppable", written with and made famous by Sia.

And then, some time in summer 2026 I believe, all these Producers-related Bandcamp things disappeared from Bandcamp. Had someone else from the band complained? Had Braide has second thoughts? I have no idea what happened. I note that in a Sep 2026 interview, talking about other releases, Braide said, "I drive everyone mad, because as a prolific person, I tend to do these projects. I throw them out there and then delete them and do another one. I never stop." So maybe this is just Braide's way of working?

Instead, this release appeared, with a 31 Jul 2026 release date. Braide writes:
Twenty years after the first sessions began, Chris Braide returned to the songs.

Recorded entirely from scratch, PRODUCER is not an attempt to recreate the original recordings. Instead, it presents the songs as Braide hears them today — retaining their melodic and emotional foundations while bringing two decades of distance and experience to the performances.

Most importantly, the songs are once again heard in the voice that originally sang them as they were being created.

PRODUCER is not intended to erase or replace any previous version of the album. It exists alongside them: another chapter in the unusual history of a collection of songs that has continued to evolve across twenty years.
The new recordings are with half of the 2026 DBA band (Bainbridge, Hodge, Weller), plus Lee Pomeroy, formerly of Yes featuring Anderson Rabin Wakeman, and who has worked with Braide in DBA and other projects.

"Man on the Moon" is also included on Braide's My Songs, My Take, an album of piano versions of songs Braide has co-written, released on Bandcamp 1 Apr 2026. I think this is the same recording as here, but with different sound effects at the start of the track.

The tracks largely represent the 2007 version of the corpus, including some pieces omitted from Made in Basing Street proper, but released as bonus tracks later ("Broadway", "Home", "Summer Rain"), but include "Every Single Night in Jamaica", which I think postdates 2007. Braide released a commentary on the material on Bandcamp, My Basing Street Recollections, to accompany Producer. He explained that "Broadway" began as an instrumental sketch, recorded one night at Hook End Manor by Lipson, Braide (on grand piano) and Soan. It was given "Broadway" as a working title, but had no lyrics. In 2023, when Lipson was working on the Producers box set, he suggested Braide write a lyric for it, which he did. "Home" was written by Braide several years before he met the others and he thought it would suit the band. He played it to Lipson, who liked it. The initial recording was just Braide on piano and Soan on drums, recorded at Hook End. Other parts were added later to The Producers' version. "Summer Rain" began with Braide and Lipson experimenting with a sequence of chords. Horn helped shape Braide's lyric. Braide said that, even now, he's not certain what the lyric is about.

The result is a somewhat stripped down, more personal version of the material compared to the Made in Basing Street release. I prefer the original album, but the strength of the songwriting shines through. (HP, 22 Aug 26; updated 5 Sep 26).
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