The Good German soundtrack is turning out really well. My parts were completed quite early on. In the end I played a total of about 4 notes on the guitar, but loads of piano and various vintage keyboards. Most of this was done while looking at the picture on a little screen, trying to respond to what’s going on. Whereas with some film music you can rely on edits to tighten up the ’hit points’ later, in this case the performance really had to be there which was an interesting challenge. The strings were done on the Chamberlain, a precursor to the Mellotron, instead of with an orchestra but my initial sketches still formed the basis of the cues. Soderbergh came to the studio and okayed everything which was a big relief. He seemed like a nice guy, quite shy somehow. After that we took the weekend off which involved backstage passes to Tenacious D and a beach party at Charlize Theron’s house. It was all pretty surreal. Ms Theron was very laid–back and welcoming. She says ’dude’ a lot. Steven Dorff turned up sporting what can only be described as a gay moustache.

I arrived home from all this to a clamp on my car and domestic turmoil. But there have been a couple of great gigs. The first was with Iarla O’Lionaird at the Linbury Theatre. The atmosphere was a little tense, as it often can be in venues like that, but Iarla alternated his heartbreaking pieces with funny stories and everyone relaxed eventually. I played a few tracks of my own at the start of the show too, so it felt like I was my own support act. The next day I played on my own at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. It was a bit of an experiment doing a gig without cello or percussion, and I hadn’t really rehearsed, but I took a chance on some of the new material from ’Scene Memory’ and it turned into probably the best gig I’ve done. Sometimes you just know from the first note that everything’s going to be okay, that the audience is with you, and I managed to actually enjoy myself instead of worrying about screwing up.

I’m sitting by a pool in the Hollywood Hills, having a break from working with David Holmes on the soundtrack to The Good German, which is the new Clooney film. We’re recording in a beautiful studio in a log cabin owned by one Woodrow Wilson Jackson III, who is like a cool professor. Woody’s been playing most of the guitar and I’ve been doing all different kinds of vintage keyboards from celeste to mellotron. There might also be some string arrangements to do but that’s up in the air til next week. At the moment we’re laying the foundations for replacing the temp track, feeling our way into the overall sound. The stuff done in Ireland in December was discarded. Often the work done at this stage is reworked later as the bigger picture emerges, but Steven Soderbergh is coming in for a listen in a few days so we have to try and finish 6 or so cues.

I’ve not been in LA since Oceans 12 eighteen months ago. The place gives me mixed feelings. On the one hand it is tremendously exciting, there being just so many great musicians around all doing the best projects. On the other, it gives me the creeps. For example, the 15 foot high airbrushed surgeoned faces of newsreaders emblazoned on the billboards of Sunset Strip. Apparently these are images of people we’re meant to trust when in fact the sight of them incurs fear and despair. A superb Japanese meal last night turned into a bizarre celeb-fest as everyone from Dan Ackroyd to Kanye West jostled past. There is a pervading atmosphere of status–awareness and fakery which is all the more pernicious for seeming rather exciting until the resultant bouillabaisse of self–aggrandisement and sense of English modesty boils down into a dim gravy of palatable melancholy.

Around Christmas I fitted in more work on the vocal record featuring Eno, Ed Harcourt and others, produced a track for the superb Irish singer Foy Vance, did a couple of sessions and made an EP for Just Music (who released Honeytrap). It was strange making that kind of music again, it was a long time ago that I wrote that record, and at first I felt like I was stealing my own ideas! But when percussionist Jez Wiles arrived he injected some great energy and personality into the tracks and that got me going again. There was also a gig with Ed Harcourt, in fact 2 on the same night in East and West London. The first was rather dispirited – we felt like an unsigned act that was likely to remain so, but the second was incredible. We both raised our games and played together really empathetically. At its best playing music with someone is like a beautiful, complex dance. At its worst it’s like standing awkwardly against the wall in a crap disco with someone you don’t like. And now, back to work.