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 lovely 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 at 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.

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.

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.

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. 

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 productively, 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 much of the noodling, 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.