It was the chart-topping gospel collaboration of Bathe in the River that launched Hollie Smith as a new and powerful soul voice.
And now, five years on and two solo albums later, she has teamed up with singer, beat maverick, and multi-talented musician Mara TK - the son of Kiwi guitar legend Billy TK - for something quite different and more exotic.
If Bathe in the River was rousing and spiritual, then the songs on Band of Brothers Vol. 1 - the first in an ongoing series of records Smith has planned with various collaborators - are smouldering psychedelic future-soul.
"It inspired a different way for me to make music," she says of the mostly electronic-based album, which is a contrast to the band-driven sound of her solo work.
"It's quite spacey, and fruity, and it makes you realise how you don't really have to be dictated [to] by any sort of boundaries. It's just experimenting," she says.
While it has TK's eerie, forward-thinking musical mark all over it, which is a style he also brings to his band Electric Wire Hustle (EWH), it's Smith's voice that lends it that familiar soul feeling. Yet her singing is a little different this time round. While there are those spine-tingling hollers and wails, there are also softer, more haunting and hushed vocal moments.
"I always feel like I have to go mental with my writing and singing, to have that peak, but you don't have to do that and you [can] do it in different ways," says Smith at her record company EMI a few days before heading to Germany for a low-key networking holiday. ("I haven't sorted out any gigs or anything. I'm just going to hang out with Ladi6 and Shapeshifter, and maybe meet some of their contacts.")
On Band of Brothers her more refined and arresting singing comes from TK's influence - not that he wanted her to hold back.
"Hollie puts her life on the line when she sings. Most people are scared to get out there like that, but she's fearless. She has the baddest technique. She smashes it. There aren't many singers who can completely arrest you, like you've been stung in the heart."
TK, who is also in Germany with EWH at the moment, says the album as a whole has a similarly fearless spirit to it.
"A Wright Brothers fly-or-die kind of vibe," he says in his loopy lingo.
The idea for the Band of Brothers project came about because Smith wanted to do more collaborative projects, like those she did as a fledgling artist, including with TrinityRoots and on Bathe in the River with Don McGlashan. Following the latter, she concentrated on her solo career and released debut Long Player, which sold more than 30,000 copies, and last year's excellent, albeit underappreciated, Humour and the Misfortune of Others.
"I just needed to focus on my own stuff back then. But it kind of gets a bit lonely. I've written all this music but it's just kind of your own little journey.
"So now I've come back around to wanting to expand a bit more and be inspired by other people again."
And, of course, in between those two solo albums there was the much publicised deal with Manhattan Records (an offshoot of Blue Note) that turned bad, and her battle with depression. She got things back on track with Humour, which was a cathartic experience, and says doing a project like Band of Brothers has reinspired her as a musician even further.
She started coming up with ideas about what form these collaborations could take and she asked TK to be involved in some way.
"I was talking to him one day and he was going off on a whole other tangent, and I was like 'Dude, you're talking about a whole different project. You're talking about an album of ours, not what I was talking about'. But he said, 'Well, why don't we do it [as a duo] then'."
The only problem was they had a six-week timeframe to get it written and recorded before TK took off overseas on tour with EWH.
And it wasn't as if Smith and TK knew each other well, going from having a mutual respect for each other's work to living together solidly for six weeks.
"You know, 15-20 hour days in each other's pockets and being emotionally connected," says Smith.
"It was interesting having that forced creativity, and we just had to get it done. But it was also interesting seeing how someone else works, and letting go of ideas, like when I would write something and he would change it, and just going with the process rather than getting precious, like, 'No that's mine I want it'," she smiles.
In fact, the recording process was so fleeting and covered so much new musical ground (for Smith especially), that the pair didn't really know what they had come up with.
"And that was almost the beauty of it, that thing if people like or don't like it doesn't really bother me because it was never going to be any different. Because the only time we sat down and listened to the whole album was on the final day from start to finish. And there was this big question mark over whether we were going to pull this off - but it was quite good. I like it," she says.
The result are songs like The Spirit Racing the Mind, a twisted version of the Days of our Lives theme with added spooky soul, the beautiful Transcendence which has a dreamy Bill Withers mood, and the two-part Promised Land Hotel, a sleek Bond-theme-meets-anthemic-soul beat serenade.
The pair have contrasting writing styles. Smith comes up with an idea and runs with it, while TK is more visual and metaphorical, letting "an idea take him all over the place".
"He's got such an interesting way of thinking, and I don't want to say it's difficult, that's not really the right word, but he works on such a different level. He thinks on a different parallel from other people.
"And he's not scared of trying something, and that shows in all his music, which is so forward-thinking." Even though TK reckons he's still finding his way as a musician, he has a staunch work ethic.
"I just want to do it right. You need substance to yourself if you want depth in your art."
Lowdown
• Who: Hollie Smith and Mara TK
• What: Band of Brothers Vol. 1, a new collaborative series spearheaded by Hollie Smith.
