Circle of the Medallion is the debut album from alternative rock group Scorpion. The band was formed at a careers evening at Te Aroha College when James Brodie, Daniel Blake-Hickey and Carlos Legaz-Hounslow had been remembering things from earlier years, and Daniel mentioned the fact that they would someday be in a band. So, the 3 got to work.
Once they had figured out what they could do together, they began writing songs for a debut album (which had 2 working titles of All the Right Reasons and Egimont foot and the Soul before agreeing on Circle of the Medallion). The session took place in the next school holidays and within 9 days, the album was completed. All of the lyrics had been written by Brodie, Legaz, and Hickey before joining up to record.
Saturn Return features a guest appearance by Brodie's former band mate Troy Smith on percussion for Saturn Return, which was a last-minute track with Brodie and Hickey playing around with a piano loop and then the percussion was added in the mixing stage.
Once finished, the band set out to make individual videos for each song (as they had already made the decision not to do a tour to support it). The films were made over 5 days in Te Aroha and Waikato by each of the members. They also granted a single interview to promote the album as a band while filming the performance shots for \"The Lifting\". James has since done 2 other interviews solo. Extensive campaigning was carried out on the member's individual Facebook pages as well.
The album's release date was originally put as the 7th of November, but was pushed back due to scheduling conflicts between members on an exact release date. The date that the album was officially released on was Wednesday, November 13th 2013 (6 days after the initial release date)
The first single to be released was Return of the Explorer, followed by The Lifting. The Lifting's official video was uploaded first as the video for The Lifting was ready before the video for Return of the Explorer. Despite there already being a pictorial video for the song, an official video was made and uploaded onto YouTube the day of the release, with the other 'official' albums in their film project following suit.
After the sessions were finished, it was announced that Sarah-Anne Brodie would be taking over vocal duties from her brother on future albums, and a 5th member is being contemplated, however none of the members have yet commented on this possible 5th member.
The album was recorded independently and released via Sarah's YouTube channel HeartsTeddie Brodie.
Credits-
ALL SONGS WRITTEN, ARRANGED, AND PERFORMED BY SCORPION
SCORPION ARE-
James Brodie- Vocals, Guitars, Additional Keyboards
MANAGEMENT- Sarah-Anne Brodie, Annette Brodie, Arthur Plumpton
ASSISTANT TO JAMES BRODIE- Matthew Collecutt
ASSISTANT TO CARLOS LEGAZ-HOUNSLOW- Briar Whitten
ASSISTANT TO DANIEL BLAKE-HICKEY- Scott James
SPECIAL THANKS TO-
The families of James Brodie, Carlos Legaz-Hounslow, and Daniel Blake-Hickey; Rachel Scott, Troy Smith, Adrienne Hagan, Shelly Picard, Peter and Diana Jager, Paul Hornby-Battrick, Lyn Renwick, Danny Broeglin, the late Brian Maxwell Davy (1952-2010), Robin Spencer, and Kerianne, Shannon, Mike, and Angela Crene.
This album is dedicated to Melissa Russell, Amber Denney, and Nicola Capper. Thanks for everything
