I recently got back from a tour of Italy, playing my own music accompanied by a wonderful dancer and video artist called Isobel Blank (she did the video to Banks Of Kyoto off my last record). Having someone else with me made me enjoy playing so much more, and it was both mesmerising and relaxing to watch her move as I played. I encountered nothing but kindness and hospitality wherever I went, so sincere thanks to all that helped us. The high points were a moonlit swim in a crystal clear lake, and making friends with 9 cats on farm in the mountains; the low point was sweeping and mopping the filthy floor of a Bolognese squat where for some reason we had been asked to play on what would have been our only day off, only for the show to be canceled due to lack of promotion. And yet even this was somehow a joyous experience.

Brett Anderson’s record was finished in a 2 week flurry of activity; we managed to record woodwind and cello on 13 tracks in a single day, and fortunately we found that in the course of writing the material, a lot of the vocals and guitars could be kept. So it was more a case of polishing up what we already had than of starting again. His combination of a keen critical ear with the willingness to experiment made the experience a pleasure. The pressure of producing comes from the fact that you are effectively in charge of someone else’s artistic statement, and no matter how seriously and lovingly you approach it, for the person whose name goes on the sleeve, it carries a much greater sense of importance. The trick to making an honest and interesting recording is, I think, is to keep a serious-but-lighthearted atmosphere of openness and experimentation, with little overt consideration of the consequences. Brett was very open to this and I do think we have made an honest, interesting record.

I played in a Nick Drake tribute concert this month, with guest singers ranging from Martha Wainwright to Graham Coxon doing versions of the great man’s songs, under the guidance of Drake’s original producer Joe Boyd. We also had the original arranger Robert Kirby, and for me it was a particualr joy to hear that incredible string writing come to life before my eyes and ears. Neill Macoll took care of all Nick’s parts (I can’t think of a single other guitarist who could have done as good a job as him), which left me free to cruise around in ambient land trying not to get in anyone’s way.

Hearing Robert Kirby at work definitely inspired me in the string arranging work I did this month, even though it was for very different artists – Paloma Faith and Taio Cruz. The latter is kind of R&B which is a total departure for me, and to be honest not the kind of thing I would normally listen to but there was something about it that was incredibly emotional and that made arranging the strings (frequently employed as musical tear-duct stimulators) quite an intense undertaking. It was also my first foray into doing the scores on computer instead of by hand. I do have to admit that it’s quicker, but there’s not quite as much poetry in the process, and it doesn’t look as beautiful. I’m not sure what the ultimate effect of a beautiful handwritten score is on the end musical result, but it’s a bit like wearing particularly high-quality underwear I think – not many other people know that it’s there, but it lends an exquisite quality to the day. Plus the musicians always love it (the handwritten scores, not the underwear).

There were a couple of radio shows in Paris with Marianne Faithfull, and a bunch of sessions for Brigitte Fontaine and a famous woman who is trying to make part of her next album without the record company realising, so no further comment there. I also played on an advert (rare occurrence) for a huge American hardware store. They really went all-out on the music: coming to London, getting a huge studio and bringing lots of creative people from the agency over. One of them brought his young son who asked me to autograph his plectrum, which I found incredibly sweet. It was, frankly, reassuring to see so much money sloshing happily around at a time like this and also interesting to see how, musically, it was every bit as serious as a session for an actual album. Also odd screwing around with obscure 60s Italian guitars and making little delay loops, whilst staring at a screen full of DIY equipment… but it was another ‘I love my job’ moment.

The Brett Anderson project has been coming along well. During the writing process we’ve managed to get quite a bit of the recording done too. There’s an integrity to the the feeling of very early performances that can be hard to recapture. In some cases we’ll be able to use the first time I played the song, and the first vocal. There are lots of classical arrangements, which I still prefer to do on paper than on computer. Somehow it makes me consider each player more, as well as encouraging a more detailed use of dynamics. Copying out all the individual parts is a bit of a chore, but it’s also strangely meditative and satisfying.

I was on the receiving end of the score when I did two more concerts with Gavin Bryars. Again, it was both a challenge and a pleasure to trespass into the classical realm. The biggest challenge for me was learning a new way to connect with the other performers and fit in with the fluid pulse. You find yourself watching for their breathing, the direction of their bows, tiny inclinations of the head, and it’s beautiful to be a part of. Unfortunately when things go a bit wrong it’s infinitely more upsetting than playing a bum note in a gig.

Lot of sessions this month, which are still what I love doing most. I played on a couple of Florence And The Machine tracks, including ‘Girl with One Eye’ which is mostly a duet between guitar and voice. I decided to try and closely reflect musically what the lyrics were saying, and I think we made something quite special and unusual, like Jacques Brel meets White Stripes. I did another day on the Brigitte Fontaine album, with lots of 60s fuzz, plugged straight into the desk instead of through an amp for extra fizz, and a Duke Special record of unreleased Kurt Weill tunes which required various disruptive elements from toy piano to hurdy-gurdy and marxophone. I got to work with Ed Harcourt again on a track he’s written for Paloma Faith. Having played his music for years it always feels like coming home for me when we work together, and it can be great to have the kind of relationship with someone where you grow to instinctively understand what they want and why. On sessions for a 60s-set film called ‘Hippie Hippie Shake’ the composer, Christian Henson, provided both glorious harmonies and fine cakes. He also advised us to ‘look at the screen around bar 63′ for evidence of CGI done on one of the leading ladies in order to bring her ‘hairstyle’ more into line with the fashions of the time.

My friend Ben Nichols has a project called Dennis Hopper Choppers and he decided to try and make a whole album in 2 days. The whole studio was one big room, with the mixing desk in the same space as all the players, which is a great way to work as it eliminates a lot of shouting at glass with headphones on. Another good friend Foy Vance was making 2 EPs at once in his shed, and I went over for a day to help produce one. It seems like there’s a lot of people trying to do the maximum amount in a short space of time, and I actually think that’s healthy because you end up with more of a sense of an exciting moment in time being captured. There was one crazy day where suddenly Natalie Imbruglia needed work done on a track that very evening, and ended up sitting on my slightly crummy sofa at midnight chatting with King Creosote, who was working with Jon Hopkins in the other studio. Usually it’s me going elsewhere to work with these people and it can be slightly odd when they’re actually in your house.

And lastly, my new album ‘The Grape And The Grain’ came out last month. I did a few radio and internet tv things for it, one of which involved being crammed into a hot glass cupboard with a student who didn’t know anything about radio equipment, and playing/talking for an hour before she realised she’d been broadcasting nothing but dead air! There’s a weird tension to playing on radio and tv that, even after doing it for so long, still continues to disconcert me. I did Jools Holland with Marianne Faithfull the other day and managed to utterly balls up an introduction that, in the absence of a camera inches from my right hand, I could have played in my sleep. It’s like all the muscles go really tense and everything’s suddenly difficult. I think you sort of have to train your mind not to focus on it; we did another show and I was fine, I think because it was 9am and Peter Mandelson was next to me, which was surreal enough to take the edge off. Very professional.

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.

Hello and Happy New Year. I’ve spent most of it so far working on a new record. It involves singing which is something I’ve not done much since I was a teenager. Thankfully I think my lyrics might have improved somewhat since then, but there is still wild oscillation between confidence and crisis. It can be hard doing everything in isolation – writing, producing, engineering and performing. And when you do build up the courage to play your nascent meanderings to someone, you have to make sure that someone will really give their true opinion instead of just doing the equivalent of smiling and nodding whilst slowly backing away. I’m keeping it under wraps for the moment but I’m excited. I feel like I learned a lot from the projects I worked on last year and it’s filtering through.

Some session work to see last year out: I did a day with the film composer John Powell (who did the Bourne films amongst many others). He wanted me to play in surround sound and it was a fantastic day of sound design and improvisation. I’d never played through 5 channels before and I found it hard to live with just two after experiencing it! I produced a couple more tracks for Claire Nicolson, the highlight being when the harmonica player from Alabama 3 turned up and nailed a first take of the most amazing harp playing I’d ever heard; instead of the usual suggestions and refinements I just went into the live room and shook his hand. I also spent a couple of days recording the new Ronan Keating album, which was an unusual experience. The whole thing was done live in 2 days with a 26-piece orchestra. My old teacher from the Royal Academy, Nick Ingman, was doing the arrangements and conducting, and as a string arranger myself it was a total pleasure to watch him work. Apart from the sheer elegance of the writing, these things are always something of an exercise in crowd control. Faced with a yammering roomful of people he didn’t shout, he just quietly said the word ‘sex’ and waited for everyone to tune in, before continuing with ‘thank you. Now, bar 22 please’. There was a bit of added pressure playing in that situation as they have a strict schedule to keep to and equally strict union rules about when the session has to be stopped. So if you make a mistake you can’t just punch in, everyone has to do it again.

On the live side, I did a gig with Beth Rowley at the O2 arena. Nice to be able to say I’ve played there, but overall it was the usual stadium experience of looking out from the stage into pitch black, dimly aware you’re somewhere huge, with disproportionately quiet sound. Then there was the splendid Twisted Christmas at the Barbican. A huge range of artists from Jarvis Cocker to Patrick Wolf, Foy Vance and the Smoke Fairies all interpreting Christmas songs, as smells specially concocted by Heston Blumenthal billowed around the stage. The band featured some of the guys from Tom Waits’s band, Roger Eno and Neil MacColl. Ralph Carney the sax player played something so brilliant in rehearsal that the whole band spontaneously applauded (whilst still trying to play their instruments). All very last minute, rehearsing right up to doors opening, but all the better for it and the best way to celebrate Christmas in my view.

I got some mixes together for the Brian Eno/Herbie Hancock project, but there is probably a bit further to go with the material and possibly some new tracks to come. fingers crossed it will be completed soon though.

I’ve just returned from Russia where I was invited to play a couple of shows as part of the excellent Muzenergo Festival. It’s been a long time since I played any of my own music and it was something of a surprise to me how well it went down. I’ve always been quite selfish and insular in writing and performing, not really taking into account that what I do might be experienced, let alone appreciated, by others – so I was really touched by the response. I was also impressed by how passionate the organisers, and everyone I met there, were about discovering and supporting new music. In a country where Amazon and iTunes have not yet utterly saturated consumers’ consciousness, there is a different kind of inquisitive spirit. The whole thing inspired me to write 3 songs at the airport on the way home, and strengthened my resolve to do much more to promote my next record which comes out in February. Then today it was straight back into the ‘day job’, doing strings for the Sugababes, trying to make one violinist (albeit a brilliant one) sound like an orchestra. Credit crunch affecting the budgets even of top pop stars apparently.

By contrast, an air of freedom, relaxation and luxury pervaded at Bryn Derwen studios in idyllic Snowdonia, for the recording of Kathryn Williams’ album. It was just a magical experience – we did the whole record in 3 days, almost entirely live. Kate St John had assembled a brilliant team of people, including Martyn Barker on percussion (who plays on my new album) and Neil Macoll, who is easily the finest acoustic guitarist I have ever worked with and has loads of other sounds at his disposal too. Working with him was a particular joy. The engineer David Wrench achieved the near-impossible combination of fantastic sound with minimal fuss, and even revealed a rare talent for reading the shipping forecast in a strangely sexy way (‘Tyne Dogger, rough or very rough’).

The shipping forecast turned out to contain pertinent information for me, as I had to sail from Wales over to Dublin to do a concert with Gavin Bryars. He is a true living legend of a composer, and it was a privilege that he had included parts for me in a new song cycle conceived for Iarla O’Lionaird. Although I’ve spent a good deal of time standing in front of classical string players, it is so different to be part of the ensemble, to feel how unfamiliar and nuanced the flow and movement of these groups is, and to recognise how much more focused your concentration has to be. Having come from a situation of complete freedom the day before, it was actually pretty scary to be plunged into one where utter precision is called for, and on the first day I felt I was in way over my head and got very depressed. It came together (more or less) for the performance, and while I wasn’t satisfied by my level of accuracy, I did at least manage to do what I’ve wanted to try for a long time – integrating electric guitar textures with acoustic instruments in a sypmpathetic way, without sacrificing the integrity of the sound. I think this is something that would be impossible without playing through a laptop; whenever guitar amps are involved I find the sound too directional, and either raucous or castrated. Hopefully we’ll play the piece again and i’ll get a chance to do everything really properly.

I spent a few days with a couple of new artists – a guy called Joe on Rough Trade who seems to have somehow channelled the spirit of Ella Fitzgerald into his 17-year-old larynx, and Liam Gerner who has a lovely line in thought-provoking but gutsy acoustic rock. It’s a nice feeling to go in and try and help people by being, essentially, a fresh pair of ears. And I managed to crowbar the hurdy-gurdy in at one point which is always satisfying. I also finished a set of mixes for the Eno/Herbie Hancock project. It’s still not quite fully formed, but it’s getting closer. I hope. Brian and I are both extremely excited about it – there is something truly ‘new’ about it. I realised that today it has been underway for almost exactly 2 years – the first sessions were in November 2006, then Brian handed me the files to start sorting out this time last year, and it’s been intermittently honed ever since.

And finally, some more film work this month. I finished mixing and tweaking the score I wrote with David Holmes for ’5 Minutes Of Heaven’, did some work with Jon Hopkins on a possible Warp Films project, and had a few guitar sessions with Alex Heffes for the new Russell Crowe film ‘State Of Play’. Random Russell Crowe fact: I once encountered him backstage in Santa Monica at a Neil Finn concert when I was doing the support slot with Ed Harcourt. We were watching from the wings when Russell wandered up to do the same. He didn’t acknowledge us but he did do one of the most dreadful farts it has ever been my misfortune to be in the vicinity of, which resulted in our immediate departure. Perhaps that was his tactic.