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.

This month started off with a session for a cat food commercial, during which I had to make miaowing noises with my slide tube, to coincide with the lucky feline’s face looming into view. While I was there, for good measure, they got me to do some morris-dancing music too. It was all surprisingly satisfying, requiring a certain amount of precision and a quick response to demands - everything in that world has to be done at light speed, and I left the building feeling pleasantly like a professional musician.

I have been working quite a lot with Brian Eno, helping him out with a really exciting collaboration which he probably wouldn’t want me to discuss. But it involved my taking the master files home, tidying them up, adding drums and guitars, and bringing them back for further tweaks. He has so much amazing stuff milling around in relative chaos on a multitude of hard drives, and today I took away another load of stuff which I shouldn’t mention, to try and edit into shape while I’m on tour next month. Watching him apply effects to a sound is a fascinating experience. He does all the things that a trained engineer would recoil from and deem ‘wrong’ - things most people would not even bother considering. But it invariably comes out sounding marvelous, and typically ‘eno’. And he is just such a sweet, kind , funny (and yes of course, that dreaded word - interesting) man. I also never tire of witnessing him build up his trademark wall of vocal harmonies - no headphones, wandering around the room in front of the speakers projecting his benevolently manly, and above all English, voice.

Apart from that, and quick sessions for Jon Hopkins and David Holmes for their new albums, I’ve been working on a new record - The Grape And The Grain - a follow-up to Honeytrap on Just Music. It has been really hard going, and at one point I nearly deleted the lot, despairing of it and having consulted colleagues and girlfriend with fairly desultory results. But at the last moment I decided it was worth a final effort, and I spent several days locked in my basement studio with only a hurdy-gurdy and piano for company. Eventually things started to come back to life and now, with the sage advice of my dear friend Steve, and a few tracks duly culled, I think things are back on track. For me the lesson has been to not play anything to anyone until it’s ready, and also when things are slightly crap, to admit it to myself instead of trying to hang onto what few good bits there are. And above all it’s been great to be able to spend so much time on my own music, especially when the rest of the year is now spoken for.

As soon as I got off the Bryan Ferry tour I repaired to my basement to produce an album by the Smoke Fairies. It took all month and was a wonderful experience. They are a folk/dark bluegrass duo who sing and play 50s guitars. Recording it was sonic heaven, creating an intimate forest of plucked strings over which I played hurdy–gurdy, accordion, mandolin and harmonium. An intense period musically and psychologically, but I am really pleased with the results. Now they just have to find themselves a deal!

Then I had a bizarre couple of days doing sessions for an upcoming children’s cartoon series in which all the characters are in bands and fight each other with magical rays that emanate from their instruments (this is set in the future by the way). Each one had to have their own personality, which was great fun to design, and I got to dust off an utterly tasteless 80s monstrosity of an electric guitar which hadn’t seen the light of day for some time. The project is the brainchild of Magnus Fiennes, a genius programmer and film music guy who seems to somehow juggle hundreds of projects at once. I also did a little gig with Ed Harcourt at the legendary Ronnie Scott’s to mark the release of his Best–Of. As always it was like a warm, unrehearsed family reunion.

Finally there is a release date for my new record The Unrest Cure – January 21st. These things take time! So there is suddenly lots to do, from making a video of interviews with all the guest singers (and myself), to editing the Bingo Gazingo footage that I shot in New York and having meetings with another round of truly dynamic individuals in glass offices who have it with in their power to do wonderful things or, um, forget about me completely. A short update considering it’s been a while, but maybe that’s because I’m really satisfied with what’s been going on the last few weeks, and I don’t feel so compelled to try and make much sense of it.