Much of the last month or so has been spent with Brett Anderson, producing and co-writing his album. It’s been a real pleasure and quite a departure for both of us, and I’m fairly reluctant to describe the direction of it – partly because it will spoil the surprise, and partly because part of the fun of the process is deviating from the ‘plan’. But we have most of it written now I think, some of the songs being conceived by Brett and then developed by me, and some starting with a musical idea of mine which he then takes away and works on. It’s always a thrill to hear that iconic voice coming through the speakers in my studio, and we’re becoming regulars in the local cafes, although we’ve become slightly wary of the one that sells giant, indigestible potatoes.

There have been a few film sessions too. I worked with a Jack C Arnold, playing guitar on his beautiful score to a film called “The Scouting Book For Boys” which promises to be an amazing film. A lot of the music called for extremely quietly played acoustic guitar, which I had to time by looking at a white bar moving across the movie. So it was a case of looking from music to hand to screen whilst trying to make as little extraneous noise as possible. In fact the hardest part was stopping my stomach from making all the little noises that stomachs make, that are undetectable until amplified alarmingly by hyper-sensitive microphones. They probably have some editing to do. I also did a day with a composer called Daniel Pemberton for the tv show “Runaway”. Most of that was on ukelele, and I got to sit next to the harpist whose playing was distractingly mesmerising.

I went straight from the ukelele session to what I thought was a meeting with Chris Martin… but it turned out to be a proper writing/recording session with him and Natalie Imbruglia. I think they were expecting me to turn up with all my crazy instruments and laptop effects, and all I had with me was a ukelele. But we ended up getting plenty done over the next few days. Chris was an absolute pleasure to work with, very funny and sweet. The first time I sat down to play something he said, “Well I’ve heard a lot about you so you’d better be f*cking good, ” to which I replied “I could say the same to you”. It’s easy to see why he’s so successful though, he’s a bit of a force of nature and I hope I get to experience it again.

I played in Marianne Faithfull’s band for a BBC special she did a couple of weeks back. We had to get 25 songs together with minimal rehearsal and it was a bit of a scary gig. Also I had to do it without shoes because I’d sprained my ankle after falling over whilst unloading my gear so I can only hope the viewing audience won’t be treated to shots of my bright blue socks (I should have planned ahead I know). I had a crutch during rehearsals and Marianne took to referring to me affectionately as ‘my little cripple’. Though thankfully not during the show.

There was a week of sessions for an album by the legendary avant-garde French chanteuse Brigitte Fontaine which was just fantastic, and a good example of the perfect way to make a record in my view – great studio with loads of old gear in it, wonderfully funny, relaxed and capable producer (Ivor Guest, who I met doing the Grace Jones record) and brilliant band including David Coulter, Seb Rochford and Tom Herbert, and another Leo guitarist from LA whose industrial but thoughtful style was a real revelation for me. I got to play loads of instruments from vibes to bass stylophone, and all this was just a backdrop for Brigittes heart-wrenching and scabrous tales of degradation.

A couple of other sessions with Beth Rowley finishing off some writing demos, and a new artist called Gary Go who wanted some epic-sounding guitars, and that’s about it for this month. Actually one more thing: I did a gig with Kathryn Williams, which I only got asked to do on the day as Neil MacColl wasn’t able to do it at the last minute. There was no way I was going to be able to recreate all Neil’s parts so I went for a moody ‘reverb and tremolo’ approach. The songs they do together are so memorable and flowing that I was able to get the whole set under my belt during the soundcheck, and with Kathryn leading the way the gig was both fun and somehow charged. After a year of mostly being in the studio it helped me get in the mood for doing more performance, perhaps of an improvised nature. So we’ll see if I can do some of that in March.

Sorry to drone on, if anyone got this far. I just do this for myself really, so that I can keep track of where the time has flown away to.

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