A MUSICAL meeting of minds has produced duo Silverlux, a musical collaboration which straddles the Tamar Valley, writes Sarah Pitt.

The duo are Tavistock-raised Adele Moore and multi-instrumentalist Clive Mead, whose music studio is on Bretonside in Plymouth.

They have recently released their first single Two Moons, along with a video, shot by Clive as an experiment on his phone one sunny day last August, which sees chanteuse Adele performing the song with an ethereal detachment which suits the vibe as she wanders through Cann Woods in the Plym Valley in a glam full-length party dress.

Musical accompaniment and all the magic in the studio afterwards is provided by Clive, a musician and sound engineer of 30 years’ experience, who is currently adding a new dimension to his music-making with PhD studies in computer music at Plymouth University where he also teaches.

The collaboration with Adele, who sings around being a mum to two young boys, came about after they were introduced by a mutual friend not long after Clive moved to the area from Brighton. They have since recorded a number of songs together, describing their music as ‘lounge music served with a twist of now’.

Complex harmonies sit comfortably alongside retro-tinged keyboard, multi-layered guitar music (Clive has quite a collection of guitars) and a 1970s-flavoured rhythm section.

Adele, who now lives in Saltash but grew up in Tavistock, has sung and made music all her life, from her earliest school days at St Rumon’s Infants School in Tavistock, at St Peter’s Junior School and then at Tavistock College ‘with my early roots in music being heavily influenced by the local scene and support from the excellent music department at the school’.

‘From day one I was interested in music,’ she says. ‘My dad went into the Royal Marines Band as a bugler so he’s very musical and my grandma was very musical as well and I always did music at Tavistock College, playing the piano and singing. I had piano lessons from really really early on, right from both primary schools.’

More recently she has sung in a choir in Saltash — she was a member of ladies barbershop choir Brunel Harmony, which used to be known as GraceNotes.

This project with Clive has seen her take a leap into the unknown as a soloist, a challenge for one who has previously been supported by a number of other voices in the choir. The music, though, provides her with the backing she needs.

‘I have never really enjoyed reading music so I play and sing by ear,’ she says. ‘I’m a bit of a mynah bird.’

She takes the melodies prepared by Clive and responds to them with her voice. ‘I like having the accompaniment of the music.

‘I’m used to singing with other people,’ she said, admitting she was nervous when they started recording as, up until now they have never performed live, due to the covid pandemic putting a brake on the live scene.

For Clive, meeting Adele has given him the opportunity to fulfil a project that he had been working on for years.

‘This project has been sitting around for a number of years in various unfinished states. I tried working with artists in Brighton but I wasn’t happy with how any of it sounded. When I moved to Plymouth about two and a half years ago I started thinking about it again and during the last lockdown I started working on it again.

‘Then a music friend introduced me to Adele, we tried it and found it was a good fit. We continued and it has worked out very well from there’

Their debut single Two Moons has taken as lot of work, as they both admit to being perfectionists. ‘I’m quite self critical,’ says Adele. ‘I will keep trying until it is just right.’

‘Two Moons was a song I had written about ten years ago,’ says Clive. ‘We had tried a couple of other songs and they weren’t quite right. Then we tried Two Moons. Adele loved it and we started recording it.’

The single was released in December although they made the video to accompany it in Cann Woods back in August. An experiment that paid off, although neither of them had done anything like it before. ‘It was essentially the blind leading the blind,’ says Clive.

With Adele in a glam sparkly dress and Clive filming on his camera, fobbing off enquiries from passing walkers, they achieved, thanks to sun filtering through the trees, just the right atmosphere for their dreamy-with-a-touch-of-disco song.‘We had the song on our portable speaker and we walked through various areas of the woods,’ said Adele. ‘We got some funny looks in Tesco with me walking around in that dress and in the woods as well.

‘So did I, following along filming a lady in a sparkly dress,’ said Clive. ‘It was a case of filming and and seeing how it came out and we got lucky.’

Adele adds: ‘We didn’t have a clue what we were doing but it worked. It was quite serendipitous. It could have gone horribly wrong.’

With a remix of Two Moons released last Friday, their next single, Born to Chase the Sun, due to be released on January 28 and their album later in the spring, the duo are looking forward to a fruitful musical union. See www.silverlux.net