I returned to Marianne Faithfull’s welcoming bosom (figuratively speaking) for a show in Dublin, before throwing myself back into Brett Anderson’s record. We ended up recording most of the lead vocals over just a few sessions, which was in keeping with the spontaneous spirit of the whole project. But there were no compromises, and it sounds amazing.

There were a few guitar sessions interspersed, various things I said I’d do but never got around to. But really over the last month I’ve hardly played. So when a couple of days ago I found myself in a massive studio doing the guitars on the new Jack Black film, I realised with a sense of forboding that I wasn’t exactly match-fit. I think I got away with it, but felt like a bit of a flabby jogger. The highlight was playing a version of Sweet Child O Mine, which was the first song I ever played live, at the age of 14, surrounded by mysterious girls who were older than me and might as well have been from a different planet.

I went to Ireland to curate the opening concert at the Festival Of World Culture. This involved overseeing collaborations between Iarla O’Lionaird, the Norwegian group Adjagas, and the Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq. The artists only met the day before the show, but there were warm feelings everywhere and somehow we managed to put together an hour and a half of extraordinary music with a very generous spirit, with seemingly no effort whatsoever. What had seemed obscure and risky turned out to be an unalloyed joy.

Lastly, there’s an album out soon by Brian Eno, with myself and Jon Hopkins. It will be on Warp. It contains the fruits of several years of jams between the 3 of us. I’ve not heard anything quite like it – it sounds ‘live’ and ‘alien’ at the same time. Some things have been permitted to survive which only Brian would have had the courage to let go, and it’s so much the better for it.

I’m in New York, at the mix of the Carl Barat record which has been recorded over the last month. The recording process was wonderful, cycling in to work every day, recording drums with Seb Rochford, writing new sections to songs spontaneously, doing strings and woodwind on 6 songs in 6 hours, and enjoying Carl’s scattershot but passionate approach to making music. I think that with this record, people are going to see what a truly fine writer and performer he is.

The mix, being done by Andrew Wyatt with input from myself, is involving a lot of dismantling and distorting of the material. I’m surprised and rather gratified at the ease with which I can let go of much of the work that has been painstakingly created over the last month. The only thing that matters is that the music sounds good. In a Brooklyn bookstore I happened upon the Collected Writings Of Morton Feldman (one of my favourite composers) and in a strange synchronicity, which I take to be an omen, many of his polemical observations are curiously apposite:

“Where in life we do everything we can to avoid anxiety, in music we must pursue it”; “Everything we use to make art is precisely what kills it”; “Step aside in order to be in control… controls can be thought of as nothing more than accepted practise”; “For art to succeed, its creator must fail.”; “The great mistake lies in looking for experience in the object rather than in ourselves”

Earlier this month I dipped into modern classical music for real, playing a piece at Kammer Klang before doing an improvised set. It was rather terrifying and much more challenging that the Gavin Bryars stuff I did last year. The other musicians were very kind to me but I still felt like a dumb rock kid hanging out with professors. Then the following day I was playing guitar on the new Trevor Horn-produced Estelle single, trying to get my pop/R&B chops together. Trevor reminds me of a kind of benevolent monarch. He has a sort of effortlessly regal quality and yet is very fun-loving. I always look forward to seeing him.

Lastly, there was the Pure Scenius concert in Brighton with Brian Eno, Karl Hyde, Jon Hopkins and The Necks. As with the Australian concert, there were 3 90-minute improvised concerts in the course of the day. Most of the Necks had flown in from Australia, Jon had come from LA, and I had tonsilitis and was on a load of painkillers, so everyone was floating around a bit. But sometimes I find it’s better to be in a slightly distracted mood because it helps take the edge off the nerves. In the end it was a wonderfully fulfilling and relaxing day, less fraught than the Sydney shows and perhaps the better for it. The audience seemed subdued at first, but were on their feet 6 hours later.

Now back to work…

Most of the last week has been spent feverishly trying to finish projects off so that they don’t run into other ones that are about to start. I haven’t quite managed it. On the finished side are the Chris Difford album and Eno’s Pure Scenius project. Chris’s was quite straight forward – mostly a case of working hard to find the right vocal approach to each song, and backing vocals to illustrate lyrics which are by turns witty, moving and kaleidoscopic. One of the highlights for me was getting Green Gartside of Scritti Politti to sing on a track. Hearing that voice that i have listened to for 25 years coming out of my studio speakers was an incredible moment for me. The Scenius thing as been a more complicated journey, but after much to-ing and fro-ing I hope that we’ve hit on the final running order – a representative document of the Oprea House concerts that nevertheless works as an album in its own right. I think it has benefited from some last-minute ‘eureka’ moments from me in the dark art of mixing. It is one of the skills that seems to take the longest to develop confidence and fluidity in, full of often-unquantifiable value judgements arising from seemingly simply technical decisions. Then in the end someone goes and plays a low-res mp3 of the thing out of their iPod speakers.

Edging towards the finishing line but not quite over it yet is the Iarla O’Lionaird album. During this latest period of work, and not for the first time, his incredibly beautiful, honest and brave singing had me in tears at the mixing desk – which was a bit embarrassing for us both. Instrumentally a large part of the record involves strings, courtesy of The Geese (a very creative duo of violin and viola, whose part-planned improvisations I edited into arrangements that could never have been scored conventionally); and Oliver Coates, a quite staggeringly talented cellist whose understanding and application of influences from Xenakis to Nico Muhly made for one of the most electrifying and humbling days I’ve ever spent in a studio. Here is a man destined for greatness, if he’s not there already.

Unfinished but well on the way is the Brett Anderson record. We’ve spent some time writing songs over the edited improvisations recorded in January, and frankly both of us have that slightly naughty feeling you get when you’re trying not to be too pleased with yourself. It is going to be amazing, the songs are the most powerful and direct he’s written since Suede and the album has a sound all its own. There is a distinct drive and rawness at the heart of the record that will render overdub-stage dithering obsolete. Unfortunately I have to stop work on it now for a month or so, but I know Brett will be hard at work in my absence.

I did an improvised session for a show called ‘Late Junction’ on Radio 3 with Seb Rochford, the mbira player Chartwell Dutiro, and a young MC called Jyager. All the sounds seemed to bloom from the giant rattling, primal, joyful shell of the mbira, with Jyager managing to invent some new kind of genre which we are going to try and expand upon by making a record later in the year.

A few sessions scattered around – another great score by Alex Heffes for a film called ‘The First Grader’; a little more for KT Tunstall’s new and very different-sounding record; something with orchestra for a tv series called ‘Daughters’ during which i was not required for large swathes of time so effectively got paid to sit next door in Carluccio’s; a French artist called Lio; and even a day with Coldplay which was pretty bizarre and mostly consisted of me and Jonny geeking out over guitar effects. Lastly, Jon Hopkins and I had a day in the studio with Brian doing some more jams for an album that is going to be made from bits of our score for ‘The Lovely Bones’ that never made it into the actual film. I think it’s my job to edit it together, and although I felt slightly weak at the prospect of going through literally hours and hours of stuff, luckily Brian’s brutally efficient use of the ‘rating’ column in iTunes has cut hours, possibly even days, off the job.

Last night I played in ‘Songs In The Key Of London’ at the Barbican: a night of London-inspired songs performed by lots of different artists. I got to do the guitar solo in ‘Our House’ by Madness, which is something I used to sing along to even before I played the guitar. Elvis Costello turned up during the interval so there was an impromptu rehearsal of ‘Waterloo Sunset’ in his dressing room, with Squeeze, Green Gartside, Robyn Hitchcock, Madness, The Blockheads and Andy Serkis (Gollum) all crammed in. Totally bizarre. When we played it onstage (for the first time), picking out that beautiful melody to a packed house was just a tingly experience.

There have been a couple of other multi-artist shows I’ve been involved with recently. In January there was a tribute to Nick Drake, which is going to be on the BBC soon. With all these things there is a 2-day rehearsal (for around 26 songs), and there’s always a few moments during the concert when you turn a page and see a chart that you’ve forgotten to make notes on, and have no idea what to do. On this occasion the calm precision of the music itself seemed to diffuse a lot of the potential tension and, with the exception of the night that was filmed, it was pretty relaxing.

We went straight from the last Drake show to Heathrow airport and headed to Sydney, to do Hal Wilner’s Rogues Gallery – a collection of sea shanties – in front of the Opera House. We arrived at the first all-day rehearsal almost insane with tiredness, and by the end of the second day everyone was pretty destroyed. Rehearsals continued through the soundcheck, with Tim Robbins, Peaches, Todd Rundgren, Pere Ubu and many others working through their piratical renditions. 30 minutes before the show, the sky heavy with rain and caffeine in my bloodstream battling with the galss of wine I’d tried to calm mu nerves with (bad idea), I went onstage to check my stuff, and realised I couldn’t see. So I went and had a lie down and was quickly surrounded by worried-looking faces, and a paramedic, and then it all got a bit needlessly dramatic. In the end Dr Adrenalin did the trick and, like hearty sailors, we all pulled together and guided the ship through the storm.

After that, it was off on tour round Australia with Marianne Faithfull. To stave off the madness that I feel descending every time I have to spend days waiting around in airports, I got to work editing the huge amounts of material amassed for Brett Anderson’s next album. I whittled 12 of the 30-minute improvised jams down into songs, and the result is, I think, one of the best things I’ve ever been involved with. There is a tangible excitement to using completely improvised performances in structured music. The only time those riffs have ever been played, at the ‘moment of conception’ as it were, become the final document. This process was so intense and satisfying that I got to really enjoy the release of doing a gig in the evenings. During the encore at the Opera House, when it’s just Marianne and I onstage, I remember she looked at me with the strangest expression – sort of triumphant and defiant and kind at the same time. We don’t talk about a great deal offstage, but at that moment I really understood what she was trying to tell me – that she may be a bit eccentric and have a gravelly voice (up to that point the Australian press had been vicious), but look at her now: playing to a packed Sydney Opera house, completely in her element, with the crowd eating out of her hand.

When I got back from Australia I was persuaded to go on tour again! This time round the UK for a week with Kathryn Williams. We recorded her album live last year and she wanted to take the same band out on the road. It was a really wonderful experience, being with lovely friends and playing music with extreme delicacy and awareness, which is demanded wordlessly by Kathryn’s own performance. So minimal, but so rich. Kathryn is extremely pregnant at the moment so it was rather gutsy of her to take on the strain of a tour. She even insisted on staying up with me til 1:30am doing backing vocals for the Chris Difford album.

That project is nearly finished now – just vocals to do. We had anoterh few days tracking instruments at Jools Holland’s extraordinary private studio in Greenwich. It’s like a miniature village from the 1930s, and features two hyperactive cats who are very friendly and like to destroy the soundproofing when you’re not looking. I did some strings with a wonderful violinist called Emma Smith and tried a new approach – instead of arranging like I usually do, I kept an idea in my mind of what it should be, and then worked with Emma to get close to it. In other words, lessening the amount of control. I found the results were a lot more interesting and unexpected – stuff you would never think of writing down. Plus it got me out of copying parts.

2010 has started with a really productive period of work. I always enjoy this time of year because it’s traditionally a fairly quiet time with most people still away on holiday – which provides an opportunity to get a lot done. Last week Brett Anderson and I started work on a new album. I proposed that we draw all the musical material from improvisations. He had never worked in this way before, and I was really delighted that he was willing to try it, and touched that he trusted me enough to go along with it. Along with two of my favourite musicians, Seb Rochford on drums and Leo Ross on guitar, we came up with 26 pieces in 3 days. It is now down to me to edit these into song structures for Brett to write over. This large-scale editing is something I love to do, and the improvisatory way of working allowed me to play guitar much more freely than I usually do as a producer, when I have so much else to think about. At this stage of the record, I feel like a sculptor about to start chiselling away at an extremely high-quality piece of stone.

The following week I stayed in to same studio, with Seb, to start producing the Chris Difford album that we’ve been writing for the last few months. It felt great to be working with someone who has made so many timeless records, and who is still open to trying new directions. One fantastic moment came when Chris brought in his earliest demos, on reel-to-reel tapes that had not been played since 1973. We all looked on in respectful silence as the engineer lined them up on the tape machine (a rare sight nowadays), and when the first song came through I realised it was in the same key as the one we were working on that day, which was about that period in Chris’s life. I sampled the tape and played it backwards through our track, creating a psychedelically nostalgic background. Being in that beautiful studio, 12 hours a day for 10 days, working on 41 different pieces of music with my friends, I really felt like producing is what I love doing the most. Some parts of it are quite geeky, for instance just having loads of guitars and amps and beautiful set out and ready to go; some parts of it are much deeper, as the best kind of focus comes when you are so deeply into the essence of the music that it hardly feels like work – until the end of the day when exhaustion comes crashing down.

Much of December was spent in solitary confinement in my studio, tweaking and refining mixes and edits of Brian Eno’s Pure Scenius project, and continuing to work on Iarla O’Lionaird’s album. There was also a session for a film score which demanded classical guitar only, which always freaks me out a bit as I’m not really trained on it, and my classical guitar isa 3/4 scale one intended for children. But I managed to get through, aided by the extra time afforded to me by various technical difficulties!

This December saw the second outing of Twisted Christmas at the Barbican, which gave me the rare opportunity to jam with a bagpiper, accompany Eliza Carthy singing a Chris De Burgh song, and play rhythm guitar to Richard Hawley’s lead. I made the most out of my new toy – a set of ‘blossum bells’, made by some eccentric guy in San Fransisco. They are 6 large metal cones on a stick, and you don’t know which notes they’ll be until they arrive. being restricted to 6 notes makes you come up with more interesting parts; I was reminded of it last week when I had to play a part on Farfisa in C, when none of the C’s worked.

I used the lull before Christmas to finish off a few of the things I’d promised to do for friends, but which I hadn’t yet found time for. I also did another session for Trevor Horn, for a South African tenor singer. I really enjoy working for Trevor because of the precision that’s required, combined with a very English sense of both humour and professionalism. He even took time to play me the original multi-tracks of ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’, which was fascinating to dismantle and strip back to an absolutely killer 4-piece band live performance.

Finally, I went through quite a strange period with a project I was working on before Christmas, which dented my confidence. The immediately positive outcome of it was that I realised that for me, it’s important never to take confidence for granted, and often it’s helpful to deliberately undermine it. Feeling like there’s a long way to go, or being aware of a multitude of deficiencies can seem daunting or depressing, but it’s also a great catalyst to progress and improvement. That’s not to say it’s good to be insecure – that’s an impediment too. I just think it’s best to be as ‘transparent’ as possible, and never let a preconceived idea of right and wrong stifle creativity. I think it’s the musical equivalent of the scientific ‘double-blind’ test.

Hello, friends, I just found out that Bingo Gazingo (born Murray Wachs) died on New Years Day. He was struck by a cab on his way to perform his weekly show at the Bowery Poetry Club about a month ago.

If you love Bingo as a person and an artist as much as I do, I encourage you to spread the word about his music to people and let them know how awesome he was. He’s got a myspace page where people can appreciate his music and comment:

http://www.myspace.com/bingogazingo

BINGO GAZINGO

The first time I saw Bingo was in a UK documentary about outsider artists in America. I watched his segment over and over again, and resolved to try and work with him. Within 20 minutes of emailing the show’s producer I was on the phone with Bingo and he had launched into spirited transatlantic renditions of his soon-to-be worldwide hits, “J-Lo” and “I Love You so Fucking Much I Can’t Shit”. His raging ambition to be famous worthy of a man a quarter of his age, his joyously demented inhibition, and what I suspected to be a hidden awareness that he was destined to remain an outsider – all of these endeared him to me immediately.

I got to know Bingo (he was always Bingo, never Murray) a little better over the next few years. He made a guest appearance on my album “The Unrest Cure”, with “2000 Years From Now” – an impassioned rant against all the people who had held him back in life (‘I knew I was better than all those jerks put together’). Although I was sorry never to be able to give him the news of a hit that he demanded in a subsequent series of letters written in his trademark capitalised spidery scrawl, I think he was pleased that on his song, at least he had Brian Eno singing backup.

Bingo visited my East London studio in 2006 while he was in town with My Robot Friend. He started performing the moment he got in the door, reciting poem after poem grabbed at random from plastic bags, coat pockets, and often from the murky recesses of his memory. He wanted to concentrate on what he saw as ‘the hits’ – mostly highly libellous celebrity-themed pieces. But I was intrigued by some of the other material that slipped through, that seemed to offer tantalising insights into his past, and that blurred the line between Bingo and Murray. Many of them were about his late wife. Frequently he would veer from tender to scatological in the space of a couplet, snapping out of beauty and back into a sneer.

On the car journey back across town that night, my friend spontaneously ordered me to stop the car outside The Foundry, a squat and a popular venue for art, poetry and music. She led Bingo inside and he walked straight onto the stage and took the assembled crowd of young trendies by storm. A large group of them followed him out to the car afterwards, huddling around him and asking who he was. The look of quiet satisfaction on his face was one I’ll never forget. I saw it a few more times, and that look remains one of my favourite memories of Bingo.

Later that year I filmed the video of “2000 Years” with Bingo in Central Park. After telling off the cameraman and I for taking a taxi instead of the subway from Queens, he zipped around the park on a sweltering summer’s day with abandon, dancing with a salsa band and defiling a playground with cries of ‘I want to put my iTube in your YouTube’. He was willing to do anything in the name of promotion, but after several hours even he got tired, and abruptly said ‘ok, that’s enough’, before shuffling off.

Nobody did more for Bingo than My Robot Friend, Howard. He gave Bingo an outlet, and brought his voice to many more people than would otherwise have heard it. Both Howard and I will keep endeavoring to bring all Bingo’s recorded work to the attention of the public, but no longer – in the words of the great man himself – to that of the ‘fucking record companies’.

In one of my favourite songs of Bingo’s entitled “What A Life Some Shit”, he makes some very fair observations: ‘Why do bad things happen to good people? Why does God bust our balls? Even if you have the talent, you have to be gallant’. Bingo definitely had the talent, and despite his propensity for bellowing profane poetry at startled strangers in the street, I found him to be nothing less than a perfect gentleman. He had a fiery but generous spirit, and despite his uncompromising nature he didn’t take himself too seriously. The mainstream may not have taken him to its heart, but that’s because the machine that drives it doesn’t have one.

In “The More I Love You More”, he writes ‘You are the last page of my life, you are the last poem I’ll ever write. Here’s to you with love, and here’s to love with you’. Quoting that is the best memorial I can offer. I feel extremely lucky to have known him, I smile at the memory of such an inspiring person, and I miss him. Please spread the word!

I’ve also been working on Chris Difford’s record, continuing to write songs with him and beginning to plan the recording sessions in January, and Iarla O’Lionaird’s album too. I had a couple of days with Jon Hopkins, putting puano on Iarla’s stuff. We’ve known each other since we were 15 and we know each others musical personalities so well, and yet it is a continuing joy to keep developing and surprising each other. He has a touch and approach to the piano that is mesmerising and unique.

One of the things we worked on together last year was the score to The Lovely Bones, which we co-wrote with Brian Eno. Last week was the world premiere, held at Leicester Square. We were sat 3 rows behind Charles and Camilla, whose otherwise-standard issue cinema seats had been specially draped in ermine. Once seated in the cinema, we were able to watch the arrival of various stars and dignitaries on the big screen, before seeing them enter the auditorium in reality. The sheer oddness of the occasion made it even more difficult for me to assess the film, and how the music had been used. I just remember being really pleased at how much of our stuff was intact, and generally overwhelmed at hearing stuff I’d written blaring out of a Peter Jackson movie. Also odd was the fact that I had to go straight to the premiere from a session with Trevor Horn. This involved getting changed into my tuxedo in a vocal booth, and bidding farewell to the most famous producer in the land whilst wearing it.

I have been trying to turn Brian’s Pure Scenius project from June this year into an album; coming to terms with the sheer amount of material, and figuring out how best to present it, have been the main challenges but it seems that Brian, Karl Hyde and I are gradually circling in on the right approach. It’s interesting to edit and mix 20-minute long pieces of music, because to get a true picture of what is right, you have to listen through from the top every time. But as ever, it’s about paying attention to detail without losing sight of the overall feeling.

Work continued with David Holmes on the Russian film ‘Gustav’. There was a bit of a scramble on the first day when the producer announced that he wanted to hear 5 major themes by the end of the night; but we got through that one and I think it’s going to be one of the best scores David has done. One night he took me to the club he’s just opened, got behind the bar, and destroyed me with whiskey. The following day was spent trying to do intricate string arrangements through a noxious fog.

A short tour with Marianne Faithfull was like a mini-holiday, albeit a sleep-deprived one. The main thing I learned from it is that Luxembourg town is absolutely lovely. Funny how tempting it can be to generalise about a whole town, or even country, based on one’s pathetically limited experience of playing there. Hence the group resolution that Amsterdam rocks whereas Zurich sucks. All very scientific of course.

There were a few sessions for other film things, one involving lots of small instruments that are very hard to tune and all in different keys, which was like some kind of living anxiety dream; and I’ve been working a bit with Duffy who is a bundle of manic benevolent energy. And lastly my new solo record has been mixed, and will hopefully be released in the first half of next year. It’s called ‘Zero Sum’.

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.

Almost 2 months since my last entry… and despite it being holiday season I haven’t been on holiday. Well, I sort of have – for the best part of a month I was on tour with Marianne Faithfull. A punishing number of flights notwithstanding, I had a great time hanging out with my friends in various parts of Europe. I felt really grateful to Marianne – she’s been very kind and encouraging to me and she gave the music her all every night, which really helps when, half way through the tour, everything becomes a bit like Groundhog Day. Once the music gets familiar it’s sorely tempting to start embellishing, but because everyone else is doing it too the whoe thing can veer dangerously close to jazz. On this tour, I found that I was almost completely relaxed onstage – hardly even aware that there was an audience. It made me play so much better, because although at times I felt almost weirdly complacent, it let me play very honestly.

In the London-based gaps between dates, I put in a bit of an effort and finished my new album, on which I’m singing. It seems like every record is harder to make than the last, purely from a perfectionist point of view. My plan to get this one finished was to get other people in to build up the tracks and give me impetus. Cleveland Watkiss and Lisa Lindley-Jones contributed some amazing vocals, and helped me up my game. Pat Dillett, who mixed the Eno/Byrne album that I co-produced, is going to mix it. I’m proud of it, and so relieved to have it finished after sporadic fits of pique and doubt.

Speaking of David Byrne, he asked me to guest on a couple of songs at his show at the Barbican, playing some of the parts I played on the record. Virtually his entire show is choreographed, and the whole band is dressed in white. Plus they all wear headphones instead of having monitors onstage so it was very odd to put on white trousers, sneak onstage for a bit and then sneak off again to watch the rest of the show from the audience. The whole band were so incredibly friendly and happy, and I thought that mood would definitely be encouraged by playing such euphoric, energetic music for the best part of a year.

I did some co-writing with a new artist called Bahia, which was great because she was the type of artist who comes in with already-brilliant ideas and all I had to do was help with varying the chords a bit and developing the lyrics. In other situations it can be weird, when you basically end up writing the whole thing then handing over 50%. I also did a couple of days co-writing with Brian Eno; the method of working was that each of us took it in turns to contribute one thing to the track, and every half-hour we started a new one. Sort of like musical speed-dating.

Kate Schermerhorn, from whose documentary my EP ‘Searching 1906′ was taken, asked me to write the music to her new film, which is a wry study of marriage. For each of the cues I chose a different palette of sounds, but based the themes on peals of bells to give everything some unity. I actually found it quite difficult to watch the film at the same time because parts of it were very moving, so I had to try and just maintain the memory of it as I worked on the music.

Lastly, I’ve started producing a couple of albums. One is for Iarla O’Lionaird, who I’ve worked with for a while. Producing and writing with his feels like a big reponsibility because I have such respect and love for what he does. But Most of the time I manage to feel inspired and lucky instead of intimidated! His lyrics are mostly in Irish, but he frequently explains to me what they mean, and the meaning behind them. This affects the production, as the sounds need to reflect quite precisely what is happening in the words. I find this interesting, because of course not many listeners will know exactly what he is saying, but the story is somehow told in his singing and in the sounds. He is such a vivid communicator that I feel like I know what he’s singing about even when he doesn’t tell me.

The other artist is Josephine Oniyama, whose music manages to be simultaneously unsentimental and extremely moving. It is her first record but she is an incredibly accomplished singer. It is a huge relief when, hearing someone sing for the first time, it becomes clear that instead of having to really work to get a good vocal performance, you will be choosing between ‘very good’ and ‘sublime’. Musically, I’m going to try and follw my engineering hero Tchad Blake’s approach – schizophrenic contrasts between sounds, extreme panning, and no reverb. a guy called Fred Thomas is playing on both records. He plays piano, double bass and percussion – all extravagantly well. He has many projects of his own, my favourite of which is Magic Lantern. Check ‘em out!

A few years ago I played with Brian Eno at the Fuji Rock Festival in Japan. It was the best time I’d ever had on stage, until last month when I was lucky enough to be a part of his Pure Scenius concert at the Sydney Opera House. The actual concert has been exhaustively documented elsewhere (improvised, 3 concerts in a day, tea-making facilities & tent on stage, etc) so here are a few observations from the ‘inside’.

I arrived feeling bleary and made my way into a very brightly-lit room containing lots of equipment. Everyone else in the band was extremely nice but obviously we were all somewhat nervous. The 2 days ‘rehearsing’ were actually more of a way to get acquainted with each other’s musical personalities. A few general pointers did emerge though, often based on Brian’s ability to spot people’s strengths and create space for them to be highlighted. The best example of this was the piano duet, which came about after Brian mentioned Jon Hopkins’ extraordinary ability to echo very complex chords. So like a beautiful little musical tennis match Chris Abrahams would play sparse, beautifully Feldmanesque chords, and Jon would softly and perfectly reiterate them. Karl Hyde and Brian acted as ‘frontmen’ with a difference, and whereas they each had texts to deploy at will, the manner of deployment was no more planned than it would have been had there been no rehearsal at all. The heart of the band was The Necks, whose experience with large-scale improvised music lent a coherence and assurance to the music. Their sense of space seemed to radiate out across the rest of us, and it was extraordinary how sparse and deliberate much of the music sounded, considering how many musicians there were, and how many ideas must have been going through everyone’s heads.

There was rather a strange atmosphere at the start of the first concert I remember, and for a few minutes it seemed that some of the confidence and invention that had been overflowing in rehearsal might have gone missing in the cavernous concert hall. But we felt our way into our new surroundings after a little while. It was interesting to witness the effect of playing 3 concerts in a row on the psychology of the performance. During the first I felt like we were all on our ‘best behaviour’; the second was probably themost successful, a good balance struck between nerves and assurance; the third felt more like the rehearsals because we were so used to the environment. This meant there were some brave things that worked brilliantly, and some that meandered. Personally I felt that it was really saved by the brutal encore, with everyone utterly determined to end on a high. The decisions to remain onstage while the audiences came and went, and to have tea-making facilities and sofas, were both witty and extremely clever. I shall never forget drinking tea whilst watching The Necks in front of a packed Opera House, chatting to Brian and Jon, my old schoolfriend, about how we thought the gig was going. What please me most was that Brian enjoyed it. He deserved to – for taking a huge chance with a brave concept, for being able not only to compose but more importantly to create space and conditions for good things to happen, and for making what could have been an intimidating engagement nothing other than fun and fascinating. Thank you Brian.

Returning from Sydney at 5am after a sleepless 26 hours (4 babies doing tag-team tantrums), I had to get straight on the Eurostar to Paris for shows with Marianne Faithfull. The other guitarist was Marc Ribot, who I had never met and who is the guitarist I admire and love most in the world. It was distinctly odd meeting him when I was in such a dishevelled state, but (predictably) he turned out to be a lovely, generous, witty person. He played so well that on a few occasions I had to choke back tears. It’s just a wonderful and humbling thing to witness someone so good at what they do, and it has inspired me to really make an effort to get better at my instrument. It was one of those times when, feeling like you’re at the bottom of a mountain, instead of getting discouraged by the prospect of the climb you just see beauty. And knowing that he liked some of the stuff I did gave me a simple, innocent satisfaction that no amount of applause from a crowd ever seems to bring.

When I got home from all that, I got stuck straight into my new record. To my surprise I am really enjoying singing and writing lyrics. It takes effort and a little courage to persuade myself to set up the mic and give it a go, but once I’m there I can get into it more, and listening back afterwards it seems to be getting closer and closer to what I’d imagined. There’s always a lot of tidying to do towards the end of a project, so for every day performing or recording other people there seem to be another 2 spent editing. But my plan to ‘force’ myself to finish by booking other musicians in has paid off and it’s nearly finished.

In fact it might even be finished next week were it not for Marianne’s tour, which has just started. My plan to minimise the insanity of constant air travel and hanging about involves a Russian language course and about 8 hours of audio from the Scenius concerts and rehearsals, which I am going to try and edit into shape. I find that if I can get something worthwhile done in the day, then I really enjoy the concert at the end of it – which of course is how it should be.

I had another improvised gig this month, with Leafcutter John. As with Scenius, it was partly guided by verbal suggestion and partly by a moving graphic score. Notes are not specified, but approximate pitch, velocity and attitude are determined by coloured shapes that scroll across the screen. John is brilliant at devising these and it is surprisingly tricky to follow well. It’s particularly fun for the audience to see the score I think, because there is an intuitive understanding of how it works, but some things remain a mystery. I seem to be doing more and more improvised gigs; I played one with Seb Rochford and Tom Herbert from Polar Bear a while back which was the most fun I’ve had in ages. It seemed to allow me to play more like ‘myself’, and later in the year I’m going to try and capture some of that in the studio.

I also did a couple of sessions for a great tv and film composer called Daniel Pemberton. Those sorts of sessions, whith an orchestra, are run incredibly precisely and session lengths are strictly enforced. If things go even 30 seconds overtime the atmosphere perceptibly changes as technically, musicians are meant to be paid overtime. It is so completely different to the usual ‘turn up at about 11, set up, have lunch and you should be free by 9′. On the one hand it’s quite fun because I get to feel like a ‘professional’, but on the other it seems a little ‘jobsworth’-y at times. Many of the musicians have crosswords or books on the go suring the session, I guess because they find the music so easy compared to what they were trained to do. I guess it’s not that different to me having a glass of wine on stage. And they always sounds great. But the emotion comes from the musical score, via the players’ technical competence, rather than the musicians as individuals. By contrast, in a band situation everyone is essentially a soloist, and expected to contribute more than a somple rendering of the notes, no matter how efficient or sympathetic (when there are ‘notes’ to render at all). This leads to 2 different kinds of ego problem!

Lastly, for Pure Scenius one plan was to try and come up with new musical forms, that we would present in concert as if giving a lecture from even further in the future. That didn’t quite work out, but here were my ideas anyway:

Communist Pointillism (most notably manifested as North Korean StutterPop): planned harmony is rejected as bourgeois. Musicians are each required to play no more than one note at a time – minimal deviation from which is tolerated. the resulting ‘chords’ and ‘melodies’ will be true products of the people, a musical triumph of collectivism.

Sub-Club: a nightclub playing loud mechanistic dub where no frequencies between 200Hz and 10000Hz are permitted, enabling civilised conversation to occur at the same time as furious pumping.

World Serialism: the music of the Second Viennese School has finally become part of the populist vernacular, and serialism is valued as a true artistic reflection of post-lapsarian liberation. Particularly popular in conjunction with Persian rhythms.

Dynamic Incongruity: an exercise in group- and self-regulation; playing with maximum musical aggression at the lowest possible volume, and conversely rendering the tenderest phrases as brutal sonic assaults. Gradual and sudden collective shifts between the two, with a conductor acting as a human ‘master fader’.

Practise Rooms: a recreation of what it’s like to walk through the halls of a music college – each player absolutely in their own world, creating a cacophonous melange of styles and tones (perhaps only a short demonstration would be desirable).