exploding horizons moment

I'm on a flight back from Shannon, having done the second in a run of shows with Iarla O'Lionaird. I have been trying to learn a bit of Gaelic so that I know what he's singing about. He's one of my favourite people to play with partly because of the sheer depth of feeling and sincerity in what he does, and partly because he's such a funny man. In rehearsal barely 8 bars can pass without comment, but as soon as he sings you are plunged immediately back into intense emotion, so it feels a bit like being repeatedly winched in and out of a warm bath. As we came off stage last night his analysis of the gig was: "well lads, some of that was very good, and some of it was… good enough!"

A few more things with Brian Eno this month. The David Byrne collaboration is being mixed in New York so there have been lots of subtly different versions of things flying around and being decided upon. Brian, Jon Hopkins, Pete Chilvers and I spent a week improvising and developing ideas for the film score we're working on. Once again I was impressed by the lightness of Brian's touch – the way he often sits back and creates an atmosphere where it all feels like a bit of a game, and in that fertile soil grow ideas which always end up sounding definitively 'Eno-esque". I spent most of the sessions with Brian's cat sitting on my shoulder. After the first day I decided to wear 2 layers to minimise injury.

I've noticed a disturbing trend in sessions recently, exacerbated by the proliferation of laptops: everyone (myself included) is fiddling around on the internet whenever not required to work. I walked into a David Holmes session a few months ago and everyone (except me) had just got iPhones. There was depressingly little conversation that week. In Brian's studio a group email was sent out by Pete to test who was most neurotic about checking their email. I'm ashamed to say that I lost, although I maintain that it was just unfortunate timing.

The Eno/Hancock collaboration is proceeding well; I've begun to mix some of the tracks and am arranging for various vocalists to contribute. I came across a great Tuvan throat singer in a band called Yat-Kha, and got in touch with their producer Lu Edmonds. What an inspirational character he is. He came over and played me recordings he had made in the mountains of Tajikistan (which are virtually inaccessible most of the year), in minus-30 degree temperatures. The music was unlike anything I had ever heard – ancient Sufi texts incanted over rhythms and harmonies I could never have imagined, and could barely decipher. It was a true 'exploding horizons' moment – that rare occasion when music speaks directly to a part of you that you never knew was there. I'm going to mix some of it for Lu, and since hearing it I've felt more inspired than I have in ages.

Lastly this month, I did some recording for film composer Jody Jenkins, and did a few writing sessions with singers. One was Valentina who blends 60s psychadelia with hiphop. Another was Beth Rowley, who I produced a track for a few months ago. She can paint so many different characters with her voice, and she had a wonderful treasure-trove of developing ideas hidden away in her laptop, which were very original, charming and unsettling. I also helped my friend James Wolff record some new songs of his. He's like the English successor to Jacques Brel and I urge anyone reading this to check him out (he's in my top friends)

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Pie ’n’ mash with Brian Eno

This month I've been working on the new Eno/Byrne record, which is now on the way to being mixed. Brian handed me all the files and I started off by collating all the different versions that had sprouted up; he and David had been working separately on different versions of the same song. Once the right version was agreed, Seb Rochford came down to my studio to put drums on everything. As with every time I work with him, he completely blew me away. Particularly remarkable is the way he tunes his kit to each track. All drummers are supposed to do this, but he gets it so right that his drums always sit inside the track perfectly, which was particularly important on this record as there were so many crazy loops and bits of percussion already on it. Brian came to the studio for a couple of hours and, after generally approving things, made a number of brilliant rapid-fire suggestions that completely changed the feel of some of the tracks. We went to the local pie-n-mash place (G. Kelly's - an East End legend - slightly surreal seeing him in there) and got drenched on the way.

The next stage was editing all the drums to sit properly with the programmed bits, which took the best part of a week. Then I started going through all the sounds doing the same to them. Since then I've been playing extra bits of guitar, piano and percussion, and emailing back and forth with Brian and David, putting in all the last bits that need to be added. David is incredibly fast delivering his vocal takes (which he's been emailing from New York), and it's a real pleasure to go sifting through them - he's such an eccentric singer and the gaps between verses are often filled with joyful little 'whoop's and interjections, and sometimes the unmistakable honks of a New York taxi, which magically always seem to end just in time for when the singing starts. Bizarrely I've only actually met him once, when he came to London a couple of weeks ago. We got to have a guitar jam together on one of the tracks, and the same day I helped Brian layer up his trademark choir of manly vocals. It's always lovely witnessing him do that, and especially so underneath David's voice - the two together is such a familiar, classic combination. So now I'm preparing all the files for mixing, which is fairly grunt-like but I definitely feel like a privileged grunt.

I did a couple of concerts this month called Daughters Of Albion, which is like a mini-festival of female folk singers featuring Norma Waterson, Kathryn Williams, June Tabor and several others. I was filling in for David Coulter, and if ever there was a terrifying person to have to fill in for, it is he - he plays everything from the mandola to the musical saw. So I came duly armed with hurdy-gurdy, mandolin, bouzouki, guitaret, bandura and guitorgan, and had a great time making strange sounds and playing beautiful folk music. It all felt very relaxed (especially considering it was put together so quickly), and a few times during the concert I was lost in the music and completely forgot I was doing a gig.

I also did a show of my own in Brighton, the first for nearly a year. I decided to minimise the looping trickery and do most of it on acoustic, and it was a much more pleasurable, musical experience. I'm planning to do a lot more shows around the time of my next record. And last night I played with Peter Schwalm and a video artist called Sophie Clements. My part was completely improvised but I took all my cues from the visuals; it was a new thing for me responding to sound and vision at the same time, and it seemed to take a lot of the potential bullshit out of improvisation - the sounds have to compliment what you see and the notes compliment what you hear, and the music seems to flow out really naturally.

Lastly I did a bit of work with Jon Hopkins on the film we are doing with Brian, and had a few days in the studio with Claire Nicolson, putting guitars and strings on her album and producing a couple of tracks that I wrote with her. It was a bit of a rush job but turned out well - mostly thanks to the drummer, Phil Wilkinson, who creates wonderful atmospheres with the simplest patterns, and who hits an empty suitcase with a brush instead of using a kick drum.

The 'roast up the Matterhorn' referred to last month went ok in the end, although after a 36 hour journey it was somewhat frustrating to have to travel the last leg in a tiny electric-powered wagon (the town of Zermatt does not allow cars). I was looking forward to going up the mountain, but the only day we had time to do it, the whole mountain was closed due to adverse weather conditions (fog). Incidentally, Zermatt has 2 graveyards - one for the locals and one for tourists...

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Unexpected Prog Roast

In musicians’ parlance, a ’roast’ refers to a particularly challenging gig. I am currently stuck in snowy Gatwick awaiting a plane to the Matterhorn, on the way to a prog-rock roast presided over by the impossibly affable Jon Lord (of Deep Purple fame). When I received the sheet music a day before the rehearsal, and saw page after page densely blackened with semiquavers, I panicked slightly and started to think of ways to escape. But then I cast my mind back to my college days when I used to be able to play that sort of thing, and decided to ’get my chops back’. It’s been a stimulating experience.

Most of the last month has been spent in my studio, working on a number of projects. I produced a song for Beth Rowley which will feature on a forthcoming Dusty Springfield compilation, recorded for a My Robot Friend track, did 4 new Smoke Fairies songs, continued work on the Brian Eno/David Byrne project, and had a great couple of days with drummer Seb Rochford, starting new tracks for my next record. It’s being overseen by David Holmes; he always seems to get the best out of me when we work on other projects, so I’m looking forward to seeing what happens when we do something of mine. I’m trying not to write or plan too much in advance, and letting the tracks evolve instead, avoiding my usual sounds and tendencies.

Also this month I was asked to contribute a track to an album put together by Rosetta Life - a charity that uses the arts to enhance the lives of terminally ill children. They gave me a 15 minute cd of a 5 year old girl called Kimberley, who at birth was given just weeks to live. She is unable to speak, but can sing and imitate sounds. So music is the way she communicates. I made an electronic track using only sounds that she had produced, and overlaid a commentary by her mother explaining her condition. As with the previous thing I did for this charity, it seemed like a blessed project in a way - there were so many happy accidents, and unlikely alignments of disparate elements turning out to be in time, or in the same key. It was a joy to work on.

A friend in LA is producing an album called ’Headless Heroes’, featuring a great new American folk artist called Alela Diane covering obscure 60s songs. He asked me to do string arrangements for 3 of them, and it was great to be able to record them all at home and send the files by email. I’ve been so enjoying working at home and having these wonderful projects come to me. It’s the kind of life I want at the moment (especially now that I am at Gatwick in a 5-hour delay).

A couple of forays into adland, one successful and one not. I just deleted the paragraph I wrote about the experience, but if you can imagine a situation where bullshit also has the capacity to break your heart (though through no fault of the people you are working for I hasten to add), then you’ll get the jist. I have a lot of respect for people who spend their whole careers doing that kind of thing. Even when it goes well, it’s decimating.

A session for Jon Hopkins’ new album and a few tweaks to the closing credits of the Hunger soundtrack, and that’s pretty much it. Spare moments were spent thinking about with lyrical approaches to my next solo project. I think I want to sing this time and, whereas I’ve often written for others (and 10 years ago used to write and sing my own songs), I have a pathological aversion to most of the lyrics I hear and write. But I’m finding another way to approach things, partly inspired by The Books. I’ve also really enjoyed singing again, and ended up adding backing vocals to the Beth Rowley and Headless Heroes tracks. Like the unexpected prog roast, it’s a new challenge and I’m going to take it slow and steady.

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...it doesn’t need any music

I've just finished working with David Holmes on the soundtrack to a film called "Hunger". It follows the last weeks in the life of the Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands, and is one of the most intense and uncompromising pieces of cinema I have ever seen. When we first watched it David and I looked at each other and said, 'It doesn't need any music'! But the director, visual artist Steve McQueen, fell in love with the sound of the hurdy-gurdy through a guitar amp, so the soundtrack has ended up being mainly these pure, minimalist, 'unmusical' tones. It's my first proper credit as a film composer, and a pretty incredible one to start with. There was more film work earlier in the month when I got hired by Dario Marianelli (he just won the Oscar for 'Atonement') to provide some psychadelic guitar sounds for a new film called 'Hippy Hippy Shake'. It was an interesting session because he hadn't composed the music yet - what he wanted from me was a selection of 'building blocks' which he could work with. So although getting the textures was straight-forward, I had to make them as harmonically neutral as possible, so as not to suggest a composition. I also had to play lots of fingerpicky acoustic for him to chop up, but without any regualr accents - which was surprisingly difficult.

I did a couple of sessions at Bryan Ferry's studio, working on some new material for I-know-not-what-exactly. There were lots of chaotic but promising bits on various tapes and I was helping sort them out and get them into shape. Again I found Bryan tremendous fun to be with in the studio. He flits in and out of the room a lot, which means he is a constant source of fresh perspective, but when he is particular about something you have his undivided attention until it is correct. I had him dancing around the studio a few times and that felt very good indeed. There was an interesting couple of hours working on a remix of 'Casanova'; I got to hear the original vocals with the music stripped away, and bloody hell they're good. Such an idiosyncratic and detailed delivery.

A few other bits - finishing off editing drums for the Eno/Hancock record; we've sentsome bits to Herbie and are awaiting his reactions. I did a day's writing with Claire Nicolson, a singer I've known for a long time and who has just acquired funding for an album. A few tweaks to the American advert that is using my track 'Spider'. And a few hours with Katie Melua, who was absolutely delightful and sweet even after selling 8 million albums, and who is looking to shake up her sound a bit next time.

Terrifying ordeal of the month was being asked to play as part of an iTunes Live event with kt Tunstall, Billy Bragg and Foy Vance. iTunes have been unbelievably supportive of me, and of course it was an unexpected honour to be in such exalted company - which made me all the more nervous. I am a bit out of practise playing my own stuff. Also there was precisely no time to rehearse the collaborations between Foy, kt and I. But kt was an absolute force of nature, marshalling her backing singers and drummer to help out, and Foy was magic. It's amazing though, how I can be on stage in front of literally millions of people (like at the Diana concert), and feel no nerves whatsoever because I can see the back of a famous person's head between me and the crowd, but move me to the front of the stage and I feel like I did the night before my A-levels.

Incidentally, I did an interview with the Daily Star recently (very nice and well-informed chap who rang me), but on reading it, when asked about Brian Eno I go on about what a great guy he is and gloss over his musical achievements. A similar thing has happened in other interviews. The reason for my doing this is, everyone already knows the guy is an absolute genius! But in case anybody misinterprets my silence as some kind of slight, here it is: I can't even begin to say how much I love and respect his music, how much it continues to influence me, and what a lucky bugger I am to get to work with him and hang out. Right, I think I feel better now that I've assuaged my paranoia.

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purring in time

Flying home from Londonderry. I've been filming a dvd with the Irish singer Cara Dillon. It was a pretty idyllic session, situated not in a dark studio but the drummer's house which sits on the edge of a vast loch in the middle of nowhere. The other musicians were amazing; folk players are always so generous and eager to join in with each other at the drop of a hat. In between takes, most musicians (myself included) tend to twiddle away to themselves; with this lot you could be just tuning your guitar and someone would pick up on it and turn it into a song.

I did a lot more work on the Brian Eno/Herbie Hancock collaboration this month, recording drums with Seb Rochford (of Poalr Bear and Acoustic Ladyland). He is a quite extraordinary drummer, a fountain of invention with an admirable aversion to playing the ride cymbal, except when absolutely necessary. He has a unique feel and his parts are very melodic, which is pretty difficult on the drums. We also worked on the David Byrne recordings. Brian was on hand half the time, creating the same good feeling he does wherever he goes, and showing us a few neat tricks too – when it looked like we were about to spend hours searching for the right snare drum sound he came up with an immediate but unorthodox fix: turning it upside down. Now I have a lot of takes to edit, but it's absorbing work and good fun. Going through things at Brian's studio last week we got a bit distracted when his cat Kofi started purring in time to the music, so we put a microphone up to his neck and recorded him. The sound was unexpectedly fearsome and according to Brian Kofi is now threatening to go solo.

There were some other sessions this month, starting with David Holmes in Ireland. His new record is about to be mixed and he asked me over to Belfast to put on a few last touches. It's been about 3 years in the making and has gone through many transformations; I'm very happy for him that it's nearly finished. Then I went and had a day recording with Guy Chambers (he's the guy that wrote all Robbie Williams's songs). He's doing something of his own, quite experimental, and I had a great time jamming over long funky improvisations in his eye-wateringly well-equipped studio. I brought along my guitorgan, which he specifically wanted to hear, but it broke immediately. I also did some recording at home for an Icelanic artist called Bergmann – kind of epic soundscapey stuff. And I wrote a couple of songs with Florence And The Machine. She had recently suffered a burnt leg and started singing (about her boyfriend) 'You looked so handsome when you took me to the hospital', which I thought was a very promising start to a song.

Earlier this week my new record 'The Unrest Cure' was released. I had single of the week on iTunes with 'City Machine', which was an incredible break and also rather bizarre as I am not accustomed to that kind of exposure. Having KT Tunstall on vocals must have helped! It was somewhat nerve-racking to be exposed to the star-rating system, which of course I couldn't resist checking, and in the end the song acquitted itself fine – though I had to hand it to the guy who slagged it off in the most economical way possible ('shitty machine'). It seems like an extremely long time ago that I finished that record, and I'm happy that now it has found its way out into the world. The same week, I finished my new one 'The Grape And The Grain', which is an instrumental folk album. A few cello and piano overdubs, a few days mixing, and it was done – after a year and a half of sporadic endeavour. I'm really proud of it, partly because it features the first proper outing for my hurdy-gurdy.

And finally, some American insurance company picked up one of the songs off my first album 'Honeytrap' for a tv ad. It's just 15 seconds of plucked guitar, but these things are quite a blessing. At first they said it sounded 'too twangy' so I had to re-record it with a less twangy kind of guitar; then they accepted it, which was a major relief. It felt strange reopening the files on my computer from years ago, but the whole thing was like being given a gift from the past or something, and it made me think that even if I didn't reach that many people with it, that record will continue to have a life.

3:58 PM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

starting a band are we..?

Since coming back from the tour I've been getting back to what I ike best – tinkering around in the studio. The Brian Eno/Herbie Hancock collaboration is going well; we added some spoken word elements and Arabic percussion, and I've been editing and arranging in preparation for further sessions in January. One day at Brian's studio we got distracted by a clip that I shot in Australia of a Koala scratching its bum. Brian noticed that it looked as if the koala was playing air guitar, so we spent a happy hour putting a soundtrack together and uploading it onto Youtube – here
The tour itself was, as ever, a combination of euphoria (amazing places, good friends, music) and bullshit (politics, hanging around, gruelling travel). On the last night of the tour Guy Pratt and I decided to go out and buy the cheapest guitars we could find, play them on the last song and then trash them onstage. In Cash Converters the shop assistant eyed us mockingly and asked, "Starting a band are we?" to which Guy replied, "No – finishing one". The depraved act itself was incredibly cathartic, fun and symbolic in a personal way. Although for a few hideous moments it looked like the guitar wasn't going to break.

I've had a couple of sessions, for the amazing and up-and-coming Florence And The Machine, and the rather more established Tony Christie. I got to try out my beloved new acquisitions – the Bandura (Ukranian giant zither) and the Guitorgan (demented 60s guitar with an organ built inside of it). The combination of working on great music and at the same time seeming to make people happy is so special, and that is why at times like those I love my job so much.

Lastly I've been continuing work on my folk album, The Grape And The Grain, adding the aforementioned new instruments and writing the last few tracks. Having not listened to any of it for a while, I was relieved to find that I liked everything more than I remembered. It's interesting the way new tracks shed a different light on older ones. Although with the increasing decimation of the album as an art form I doubt the idea of context has as much relevance as it used to.

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"you’re just going to have to follow me like a whore basically..."

I am on a plane to Australia. Probably should be trying to sleep, but being unwilling to medicate myself into inertia with free booze I'm doing this instead. It is the last leg of the Bryan Ferry tour; last week we were in Russia and Eastern Europe (fact: Vilnius in Lithuania is the only town in the world with a statue of Frank Zappa). I contracted some kind of weird muscular flu in my arms and legs, which meant I could hardly manage pull my shoes on let alone play the guitar – which made the gigs a bit of a struggle. It also put a crimp in the sightseeing, so I spent most of the days editing stuff for Brian Eno. He did some jams last year with a group made up of Herbie Hancock, Squarepusher, Jon Hopkins and Steve Jones. The tracks are all over 30 minutes long and, though featuring many moments of demented genius, consist mostly of highly confusing (though terrifyingly proficient) arsing about. My job was to get them down to 6 or 7 minutes each, in order to send back to Brian and Herbie for further development. Instead of trying to make remixes with my stamp on, I wanted to keep the spirit of what was happening in the room – imagining how it would have been if everyone could read each other's minds (or even just hear each other properly – according to Brian it was difficult on the day). There is a lot of humour in it, I've taken out as much of the jazz noodling as I can, and I've never heard music quite like it before. God knows when or how the project will be finished, but I'm continuing to work on it.

I've been with Brian for the last 3 days working on the music for a film. He, Jon and I sat round in his studio improvising, and it was one of the loveliest sessions I have been involved with. I used to improvise with Jon back at school and we seem to have a real affinity. He is an extraordinary player who seems able to conjure actual colours out of his keyboard when he plays. Brian is a constant source of completely unexpected ideas – sometimes beautiful, sometimes violent, sometimes funny. The 'pieces' morphed from atmospheres into seemingly fully-realised compositions. We had a loosely enforced '3 minute rule', where instead of meandering on, after 3 minutes something had to change. On the last day Brian tried a different approach, guiding us with chords he had written on a huge board and pointing to different ones in turn, composing as he went along. It was fascinating, moving and as always with Brian, simply great fun.

I recorded with a new artist called Florence (project name: Florence And The Machine). It is like a cross between Amy Winehouse and the White Stripes, in the best possible way. Produced by Steve and Ross who I met playing in Jarvis Cocker's band, the sessions were a scream, mainly because of the wonderfully eccentric Florence herself. She brought with her a large tom-tom (which she claimed to have been practising for 2 weeks) and used it noisily and systematically to punctuate every line not only of what she sang, but also of what she said, for most of the two days. The recording method was refreshingly old-fashioned, with the 4 of us sitting in a large room and doing everything live. The sound was absolutely brutal. After playing back one of the songs to her manager (which ends with a wall of guitar mayhem), Florence pointed triumphantly at me and said "Can you believe all that noise came out of a nice young man like that?!"

Perhaps the highlight of the month though, and one of the highlights of my career really, was a concert at the Barbican called 'Plague Songs". Organised by David Coulter, it was a night of songs inspired by the Biblical plagues performed by a huge cast of artists including Rufus Wainwright, Patrick Wolf, Imogen Heap, King Creosote, Damon Albarn, Sandy Dillon, Roger Eno and The Handsome Family. I was in the house band, which was made up of some truly legendary musicians, many of whom I grew up listening to on my favourite Tom Waits records. A bizarre assortment of instruments littered the stage - musical saw (David is the world's greatest saw player), alto flute, ondes martinot and crystal bachet among many others. We only had 2 days to get a 2-hour show together, but it was a breeze. The exception being Damon's piece, which was rather tricky timing-wise. When all attempts at explaining it failed, he turned to me and said "You're just going to have to follow me like a whore basically". Too many highlights to mention; apparently there might be more concerts on the cards and I do hope so – it was amazing to be involved.

So… back to the 17-hour flight, perhaps a glass of red after all, and Die Hard 4.

2:33 AM - 3 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Diary - 19 October 2007

This month started off with a session for a cat food commercial, during which I had to make miaowing noises with my slide tube, to coincide with the lucky feline's face looming into view. While I was there, for good measure, they got me to do some morris-dancing music too. It was all surprisingly satisfying, requiring a certain amount of precision and a quick response to demands - everything in that world has to be done at light speed, and I left the building feeling pleasantly like a professional musician.

I have been working quite a lot with Brian Eno, helping him out with a really exciting collaboration which he probably wouldn't want me to discuss. But it involved my taking the master files home, tidying them up, adding drums and guitars, and bringing them back for further tweaks. He has so much amazing stuff milling around in relative chaos on a multitude of hard drives, and today I took away another load of stuff which I shouldn't mention, to try and edit into shape while I'm on tour next month. Watching him apply effects to a sound is a fascinating experience. He does all the things that a trained engineer would recoil from and deem 'wrong' - things most people would not even bother considering. But it invariably comes out sounding marvelous, and typically 'eno'. And he is just such a sweet, kind , funny (and yes of course, that dreaded word - interesting) man. I also never tire of witnessing him build up his trademark wall of vocal harmonies - no headphones, wandering around the room in front of the speakers projecting his benevolently manly, and above all English, voice.

Apart from that, and quick sessions for Jon Hopkins and David Holmes for their new albums, I've been working on a new record - The Grape And The Grain - a follow-up to Honeytrap on Just Music. It has been really hard going, and at one point I nearly deleted the lot, despairing of it and having consulted colleagues and girlfriend with fairly desultory results. But at the last moment I decided it was worth a final effort, and I spent several days locked in my basement studio with only a hurdy-gurdy and piano for company. Eventually things started to come back to life and now, with the sage advice of my dear friend Steve, and a few tracks duly culled, I think things are back on track. For me the lesson has been to not play anything to anyone until it's ready, and also when things are slightly crap, to admit it to myself instead of trying to hang onto what few good bits there are. And above all it's been great to be able to spend so much time on my own music, especially when the rest of the year is now spoken for.

3:21 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Diary - 20 September 07

As soon as I got off the Bryan Ferry tour I repaired to my basement to produce an album by the Smoke Fairies. It took all month and was a wonderful experience. They are a folk/dark bluegrass duo who sing and play 50s guitars. Recording it was sonic heaven, creating an intimate forest of plucked strings over which I played hurdy-gurdy, accordion, mandolin and harmonium. An intense period musically and psychologically, but I am really pleased with the results. Now they just have to find themselves a deal!


Then I had a bizarre couple of days doing sessions for an upcoming children's cartoon series in which all the characters are in bands and fight each other with magical rays that emanate from their instruments (this is set in the future by the way). Each one had to have their own personality, which was great fun to design, and I got to dust off an utterly tasteless 80s monstrosity of an electric guitar which hadn't seen the light of day for some time. The project is the brainchild of Magnus Fiennes, a genius programmer and film music guy who seems to somehow juggle hundreds of projects at once. I also did a little gig with Ed Harcourt at the legendary Ronnie Scott's to mark the release of his Best-Of. As always it was like a warm, unrehearsed family reunion.


Finally there is a release date for my new record The Unrest Cure – January 21st. These things take time! So there is suddenly lots to do, from making a video of interviews with all the guest singers (and myself), to editing the Bingo Gazingo footage that I shot in New York and having meetings with another round of truly dynamic individuals in glass offices who have it with in their power to do wonderful things or, um, forget about me completely.


A short update considering it's been a while, but maybe that's because I'm really satisfied with what's been going on the last few weeks, and I don't feel so compelled to try and make much sense of it.

4:34 AM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Diary - 4 August 07

I'm on a plane from Olso to Monte Carlo. It's the last few dates of the Bryan Ferry tour – no more gigs until the end of October, and I have to say that comes as a relief. The collective noun for a group of musicians should be a 'grumble', and I am ashamed to say that I've been conforming to the stereotype recently. Not that I'm complaining, I'm constantly grateful for the work. The locations have become evermore luxurious (the last leg of the tour culminated in a few days off in the Algarve), but the gigs have, for me, become difficult purely because I've run out of ways to make it interesting for myself. And this is playing challenging, brilliant music. How the hell do people cope having to play for Girls Aloud all year? Luckily I had Chris Spedding to talk to and ask advice. He told me that even if you're bored of the notes you're playing, they are still good notes and the audience will enjoy it, so basically – act if necessary. Of course he's right, and I'm always touched by his encouragement. But I don't want to act – I want to be emotionally involved in every note I play, and recently there have been times when the music has contained about as much feeling as the buttocks of a man who has been set about at length with a carpet–beater. Maybe I'm just a spoilt brat. Anyway, last night was fun – a festival with hired equipment that didn't work too well, my amp emitting a constant buzz that was louder than the guitar itself. This, along with a few glasses of wine, inspired reckless acts of abandon such as invading the viola player's riser and dancing with the backing vocalists. I also, for once, came to the front of the stage for my solos – but that was because my amp sounded so awful that I just wanted to get away from it. At breakfast this morning Bryan came up to me and said "You were really great last night. Pissed, weren't you?"

I had a wonderful few days in the studio, producing and writing with Iarla O'Lionaird for his next record. His singing is indescribably beautiful, and although at first its serenity seems utterly at odds with his frenetic, wildly enthused personality, I really think only someone who truly loves and enjoys life and other people as much as he does is capable of expressing such honesty and depth of feeling. His lyrics are all in Gaelic and some of them are taken from traditional Irish sources. One of the most interesting aspects of working with him is that he translates each section of the song for me, and describes how there need to be little touches in the music to reflect the meaning – a meaning which only a very few listeners will be able to understand.

In the meantime I had some legal issues to sort out with the new album, and did my first 'proper' interview related to it, which can be found at www.rockfeedback.com.

2:32 AM - 3 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment