This record is the most personal music I’ve made. The closest I’ve got to capturing the sounds I hear in my head. To have it out in the world already means everything.

Endless thanks to the team who helped bring this album to life, and to everyone who has listened, shared, and supported it so far.

It’s something so deep rooted we can’t explain it.

This piece is led by the cello, but questioned by the string quartet to form a call and response at times, which creates a texture I truly love.

This, more so than any other track, is the most closely inspired by the ‘songs without words’ legacy that inspired the record; lots of space for the melody to soar, and nowhere to hide. Ritual is available now wherever you get your music.

We recorded it at Paul Epworth’s magnificent The Church Studio, one of my favorite recording rooms in the world. He has a monster Neve mixing desk in the middle of the live room, and a beautiful Rhodes from 1973!

It is the perfect accompanying instrument at this point of this record, a glorious hybrid of organic and electric, simultaneously presenting the weight of a church organ but with bell-like brightness…

There’s something incredibly freeing about making a decision and sticking to it. It helps you move forward, rather than delaying the decision making process later and later. I hope this is interesting - I’ll talk about the modular synthesiser in my next post!

So I wanted to remove my interaction with computers are far as possible in the creation of this album, slow down, step back, really listen. We even took this to such a level to record at Real World which, unusually but magically, has the mixing desk and live room blended in one space.

I think growing up when I did (I’m now 38) I am both digitally native but remember a world before Google. I don’t, however, remember a studio world without computers.

On this record, one way we did that was by working with tape. Not only does it have a really great textural sound, but there is significant effort and time involved in editing, auditioning, redoing… things that take a snap of a finger in the digital domain.

Part of that, for me in the studio, is about committing to a performance, or particular sound there and then rather than hundreds of options leaving it open to tweak and change indefinitely.