Last week I took part in ‘Carousel’, a tribute to Jacques Brel at the Barbican. I’d been fairly familiar with his work, but having worked on it closely I now want to learn some proper French so that I can fully appreciate his incredible lyrics. The concert mixed French, English and Belgian singers – from Mark Almond and Momus to Arthur H and Arno – and as part of the house band I could more or less just sit back and enjoy. A non-musical highlight was hearing Arthur H translate the lyrics to ‘Madeleine’ for the audience: “She is all my life, we will eat goooood French fries…”, which made everyone in the room fall in love with him immediately. I got to use my favourite guitar – a 60s Italian thing made of sparkly plastic, with an enormous unforgiving neck, that sounds like it’s being played straight out of an old valve record player. It doesn’t get out much, but it made it onto the next Paloma Faith single too.

The week before, I was in with a new artist called Delta Maid. The producer was Craig Leon, a man of bafflingly and humblingly diverse talents, who has worked with everyone from Bob Marley and Blondie to Suicide and Pavarotti! It was fantastic to see a true master of arranging and producing at work (when we weren’t too busy getting him to tell us stories from his past). The music, which was steeped in traditions that I am by no means an expert on, was beautiful. Unbelievably it was Delta’s first experience playing with other musicians, but it didn’t show; a couple of times I sensed that I wasn’t quite getting the authentic feel she wanted, so I just got Craig to play those bits! After all, he was actually there for the ‘real thing’. The combination ended up working really well.

I went to Belfast with Jon Hopkins, for some sessions with David Holmes on a new film he’s scoring called ‘Gustav’. It is Russian, and as beautiful as it is grim. Jon and I basically spent 3 days improvising under David’s direction, and generated a load of material for David to sort through and tailor. I ended up playing a lot of guitaret (the rare thumb piano-like instrument that Eno gave me), and a £50 ukelele that David had bought recently. It was just a toy really, but played into his £3000 microphone, all the little imperfections and finger noises sounded very intense and atmospheric. When we got back, I played at one of Jon’s shows. Even in the thundering maelstrom of his live set, what he wants from his musicians is incredibly specific, and I felt slightly as though I was walking on eggshells; but I think it worked just having other people on stage (he usually plays alone), and the quiet bits took me back 15 years to when we used to play together at school concerts.

The Josephine Oniyama record got finished a few weeks ago. The last 4 or 5 days were spent mixing, and once again Josephine was extraordinarily patient during the boring bits (actually it’s all quite boring by then), inspired and passionate when called on to sing, supportive when I wobbled, and generally lovely to be around. The head of the record company came down and made some very useful suggestions – usually that is a moment to be dreaded but he comes from a musical background and was very helpful. The record deserves to do well. I also kept up the work on Iarla O’Lionaird’s album – adding a variety of strange and outsized bass instruments courtesy of Simon Edwards. I still feel this huge responsibility because of how much I love what Iarla does, but every time I hear his voice coming back through the speakers it inspires me.

I did a session for Skye Edwards (from Morcheeba), for a John Martyn tribute record – I had a bit of a hangover and hopefully it didn’t show too much. I hardly ever have them on sessions because it’s a bit miserable and scary, but luckily it was Skye’s honeyed voice coming through the speakers rather than something abrasive. There was also a day with film composer Alex Heffes, and Seb Rochford came to my studio with an artist he’s producing called Jay Brown (sister of VV). We managed to get 2 full tracks done in a day, and I just had to engineer – doing that alone is quite rare for me but I really enjoyed it, because I got to concentrate purely on mic positions and sounds, without the distraction of also having to play and produce. Seb played some absolutely incredible percussion, glass marimba and bass in addition to the drums, and we even got Jay’s managers to add handclaps at the end of the day.

And in between, I wrote a few songs with Chris Difford (of Squeeze); although not technically ‘with’, as he wasn’t there. But he sent me lyrics and asked me to come up with some music. I’d never worked that way before but found it incredibly inspiring. His words are like fully fleshed-out stories, and music just seems to rise out of them like a lovely aroma. I did 6 or 7 in a couple of days, and hopefully a few of them will go the distance.

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