Steve Reed on the origins of Magenta: We were originally working on the next Cyan album, and we had a go at letting Christina sing lead vocals on one track, and it was so amazing that Rob decided that we should do the whole album as a vehicle for her. Of course, we couldn’t call it Cyan – so we went with the next colour down – Magenta!

Rob: Children of the Sun was originally written as the next Cyan album.  The last few Cyan albums had been a lot more commercial-sounding, with a sort of Peter Gabriel vibe. But here I was trying something different, and I could tell it was getting a lot more progressive, so I decided to put Cyan on the back burner.  Also, Tina and I had just come out of doing the Trippa project together, and we were feeling really worn and battered by the whole process of getting – and losing – a deal. So I decided to do the album that I wanted to do, and the writing just kind of just “fell out” in about a week.  I tried Tina singing on it, and it sounded amazing! From a demo of four tracks of about 8 minutes each, I started adding things, and the tracks got longer and longer, so we decided to make it a double.

Christina: When Trippa petered out, I wasn’t actually intending to do anything for a while, as the whole experience had left me feeling disillusioned. But then Rob suggested his Magenta project to me, as I’d already done backing vocals with Cyan, as a possible vehicle for my voice. I said “Wellll, go on then.”

Originally, it was going to be Tina and me, but I’d just done the Fyreworks album, and I really liked the idea of having real instruments throughout and lots of different personnel, which some of the Cyan albums had been lacking. So I got Tim Robinson in to play drums.  As for the guitarists, I got in people I thought would sound good for a particular track, though I played all the rhythm and melodic stuff and bass, of course, for the first time.  But I needed some people to play the frilly stuff, so that’s why I got in Chris Fry, Andy Edwards and Martin Shellard.  Chris also plays the classical guitar on Opus 1 and 2 – I can’t play like that, but we did a couple of arrangements of themes from the album.  Martin I’d known for a long time, and he’s a big Yes fan, so I had in mind some Steve Howe-style playing on Genetesis, which he did brilliantly.  Chris also did the monster solo at the end of The Warning, which is the highlight of the album for me.

Steve: The way we work lyrically is that I work out a rough outline for the lyrics of each track, then Rob comes up with a guide vocal when he’s worked out the music and how long the piece is going to be. I write the lyrics to that guide vocal. Of course, occasionally, he’ll tell me that he’s added another, say, 5 minutes to a track and can I write some extra lyrics. This is very difficult, because you structure the lyrics in each track to tell a particular story, and it can be hard to just add lyrics in the middle when you already feel you’ve told that story.

Rob was always going to do 4 songs, so I had the idea of basing the lyrics about 4 “Revolutions” of man. The tracks then just got longer and longer, so all of a sudden we had a double album on our hands. I new I had to come up with 4 entirely different phases of Mans’ progression, so the first one I decided on was The Industrial Revolution – “Man and machine” and the next was the Genetic revolution – “Genetesis”. The first two were a bit trickier to come up with. “Children of the Sun” was inspired by the style of the music – and the whole idea of worshiping the sun and the elements. “The White Witch” was worshiping The Moon and natures ability to provide everything, while “Man and Machine” was more about worshiping machines and the thirst for knowledge, which led to “Genetesis” and man’s own obsession with ideas, and pushing ideas further forward to help us cure our own ills. “The warning” was just saying that whatever your faith is, whatever helps you find peace – machines, God, drink, anything - then just go for it.

Christina on singing Revolutions: I did like what I was singing, though. Even though Prog isn’t the sort of music I’d actually buy, Rob writes such good songs with such good melodies, it’s hard not to. It was difficult to learn 20-minute pieces, though, because the structure is so different to standard pop music. We worked on whole pieces at a time, and I find that you can’t get a good vocal performance if you’re reading the words. You have to learn them, particularly as some of the time you’re getting into character, which the prog stuff often demands.

Rob: In fact, the Warning tends to get a little forgotten about, but it resolves the story of the album. I wanted to go out on a high, with a massive guitar solo and a big, James Bond, monster production.  The problem with the track, is that I do a lot of singing on it, and I should have learned, with the benefit of hindsight, so leave the singing to Tina.  The album was written with a male voice in mind, so when we came to record it, some of the keys just didn’t work with Tina’s voice, so I did them.

We went for a kind of folky, Jethro Tull style on Children of the Sun, while The White Witch has more of a Genesis vibe to it. Man and Machine was a bit more Marillion-like, with a sort of 80s neo-prog feel, while Genetesis was meant to sound like Yes, but also a bit more modern, a bit more “out there”. We didn’t borrow anything note for note, but arrangement styles and instrumentation were borrowed.  You can’t help but be influenced by things, and if you love choirs, bass pedals, hammond organs and moogs, you’re going to sound like Yes and Genesis, basically. After all Genesis sounded like the Beatles, sometimes, and Yes sounded like the Fifth Dimension.  Everyone steals from everyone else. I knew that I’d upset a few people, but then again, a lot of people were dying to hear music that sounded like Yes and Genesis when they were making music in the 70s, before they abandoned all that and started making music in the 80s that sounded like their contemporaries.

If I had abandoned that process on Seven and Home, it wouldn’t have sounded like Magenta, even though the band has developed its own character over the last 5 years.  A lot of new prog bands seem scared to claim to be influenced by Yes or Genesis, but you still hear it in the music. There are still some things I wish I’d changed on Revolutions, but I suppose it’s what I felt at the time, especially one particular bit that sounds just too close to Garden Party by Marillion. And I definitely wish I hadn’t sung so much on the album. But I certainly had no idea the album would take off like it did.

Christina on playing it live: In truth, I never thought we’d take it live – I couldn’t see how it could be done. When we first started rehearsing it, it was like being in a band at school, it was that bad. We all looked at each other and said “how is this ever going to work”, but as the weeks went by it gradually came together, though it was a long, painful process. I felt very intimidated on stage initially. Even though I’m not a shy person, I felt I was being heavily scrutinised, almost like a job interview, but I’ve come out of myself a lot on stage now, and I think a lot of people have noticed that.