The input of UK producer Greg Haver on her debut album has given Alex Smart an inspired launch to her career as a solo artist.

Smart is a classically trained musician who says she was fortunate to receive NZ On Air funding for her song Real last May. However, it wasn’t only NZ On Air who liked her sound. While Haver was here recording the feelers album, he decided he would like to do a couple of promo tracks for other local artists. He selected Smart’s track from the NZ On Air submissions which had received funding as one he would like to produce.

Haver has recently worked as producer/engineer for Manic Street Preachers among others, and since coming here for Resonate in 2003 has leant an ear to the work of a number of local acts. While working with him was initially a daunting prospect, it was an experience Smart thoroughly enjoyed and one she is hoping to repeat.

"I was very scared and nervous when I went up there [to Auckland]. He’s a big name. I was like, 'What’s he going to think of a Kiwi girl called Alex?’ Also he is used to working with rock bands - as he put it 'sweaty boys in tight t-shirts’. So, actually, he deliberately picked a solo female artist to work with.

"He has a real passion for new and new unsigned artists - he does the same in Wales. He helps a lot of bands which aren’t signed. He was a really cool guy actually."

Haver produced the rock/pop Real in York Street Studios over three days. Apparently he liked much of what was on the demo and only re-recorded the lead vocals and drums, double tracked the guitars and added some Hammond for fun!

Inspired by that experience, Smart contacted Peter Fallon, another UK producer who she knew from the six years she spent living in England, to see if he would be interested in co-producing her debut album.

"We were a bit cheeky actually but we rang him up and said, "If we pay your airfare over here, would you come and mix our album for us?’"

Having Fallon as co-producer meant there was a tight deadline for the album which, neatly dodging the eponymous routine, is called 'This Is Me’. He was in the country for five weeks and spent three of them mixing the album. This proved a grueling time for Alex and her husband Brett who both assisted in co-production of the album with him.

"We were working 18 hour days. Peter is a real perfectionist and we couldn’t move onto another track until the one we were working on was faultless."

Aside from Real and some of the other drum tracks (which were also recorded in York Street), 'This Is Me’ was made in the garage/studio of the Smart’s Tauranga house. Alex Smart is responsible for all the vocals, keyboard, cello and all the arrangements including strings. She enlisted the help of Don Ackland on guitar, John Prini on bass and Wayne Huirua on drums. Brett handled the percussion, drum arrangements and engineering.

Once a member of the North Shore Youth Orchestra and NZ Secondary School Orchestra, Alex has played in bands for many years. It was while she was playing cello in a Celtic rock band in England that she decided to "go it alone".

"Being in Original Gift was really interesting and it gave me a lot of live gigging experience because we played mainly in Brighton and Sussex. This is when I thought 'I can really do this’. But because I was a newcomer to the band I didn’t have the credibility to write the songs, yet I had a lot of things to say!

"I came back to New Zealand all fired up. I’d written half my material in England and half of it here and I’m proud of it. I’m proud the project is done. Even if nobody had liked it, it’s part of me that we have a permanent record of."

Smart’s genre is difficult to describe although she assures me one thing it is not is "vacuous pop".

"I think you’d call me pop/rock but it’s a bit more than that really. I’m probably somewhere in between Bic Runga, Carly Binding, Brooke Fraser - somewhere around those female solo artists. But they’re all very guitar driven whereas I’m piano driven."

It is her unique sound which she is hoping will interest a distribution label.

Real features early on NZ On Air’s 26th Indie Hit Disc which is currently making its way around radio stations. Her CDs, which were released November 2003, are available at gigs and from her website but she has chosen not to go for commercial release until she can sign to a distributor.

"It is a case of finding somebody who doesn’t have anyone like me or is looking for someone like me."

This year Smart is concentrating on playing as many gigs as she can. Raised in Auckland, her new home of Tauranga has shown plenty of interest in her music and she hopes it will flow on through the country.

The inspiration behind her lyrics is life and it is perhaps this reason Smart’s music has been so well liked and received thus far.

"I really hope people relate to it [the CD] and they do feel something and it makes them think about some things in their lives. I write with a lot of heart - with a lot of myself."

Smart is working on building a support base in Tauranga then heading to the major centres to promote her unique sound and album.

"We are just going to do the hard yards. I am a hard working solo artist."

www.alexsmart.com