The other half

Although he was born in Canada, producer James Teej is now based in Ecuador – he met his wife there! – and has collaborated with Timo Maas on several projects, including the Wings remix.

“Timo is the first to admit that he’s not a trained musician or engineer, and maybe that’s why we work so well together. I’m classically trained on piano and spent several years learning guitar and Latin jazz drumming. I’ve also spent most of my life making music on computers; my dad is a gadget freak, so there’s always been a computer in the house.

“I started out on trackers, then a very early version of Acid, Cubase… I’m pretty comfortable on any DAW, but Ableton is my main platform, simply because it can keep up with how fast I work. And the graphics are great, too.

“Timo and I kind of met a while back, and I started staying at his house every time I was in Europe. He’s a great host, a fantastic chef and always has a few bottles of wine in the cellar. Don’t underestimate how important that is when it comes to getting into a creative frame of mind!

“When he played me the Wings multitrack, I was speechless. Yeah, we’ve all heard isolated tracks before, but listening to McCartney’s voice and hearing that bass was like peering into musical history.

“We spent the first couple of days listening to the parts, trying to decide what we wanted to use, but then it was just a case of jumping in feet-first. There were maybe four or five intense days at Timo’s, and then I did a few little tweaks when I was back home in Ecuador. What you hear on the finished product is more or less what we put together at Timo’s house.

“All I could think was, ‘We’ve got to get this to Paul McCartney. Even if he tells us it’s shit, I have to know what he thinks’. This is probably going to sound like a cliché, but there was definitely some magic in there air when we were working on this track… maybe it was Timo’s wine!”