Probably the most annoying thing I’ve ever written, and that’s saying something. I’d heard Michael Nyman’s ‘In Re Don Giovanni’ and also a British Rail advert on the TV. This is nothing like any of those things. I was working with the extraordinary Sarah Bennett at the time, so I blame her.

The picture is of Gwen’s imprint on the frosty grass, and although this tune was written years before she was born it suits her down to the last … woof.

Breathing the City is an instrumental reworking of one of my first songs. The tune and chord progression have haunted me for many years so it has been revisited several times. This version is focussing on atmosphere, and was a conscious attempt to start embracing and experimenting with a wider pallet of sounds and textures – elements I had previously used in my theatre work but tended to avoid in songs and personal music.

The mandolin was an important link for me to the first 1979 recording – Swan plane – which I’ll put up in a bit

Waterwood got me back to making music after a few years out. My aim was to revisit some of my earlier songs and musical themes and look at them through the light of Pistyll Gwyn, the misty woody place which is now my home in West Wales.

The tune here was originally written for a piece of theatre at Dartington Hall School in 1985, which then evolved into a song called ‘Rat Race’ before becoming ‘Waterwood’. I do like this version, but I suspect I’m not quite done with this one yet …

The image is of Pistyll Gwyn woods, summer and winter. The beautiful woman is my mother, when she was a teenager – picture taken sometime in the late 1940s.

The first verses and chorus of this song were written at the time of my father’s death, some of it as I sat by his bedside, some as I walked beside the River Usk in Brecon a few hours later. (If you are interested you can read my version of those events here.) The people named are his brother Don, sister’s Joyce, Joan, Hilda and May, mother Laura, father Charles, and wife Mary.

The rest of the song followed quite quickly, apart from the usual tweaks and alterations that happened during the recording, a few months later. As well as the sadness of the death and its impact on me, I wanted to capture the joy of nostalgia – stories and memories of his life, both his own early memories, and some of my later ones. The river Nene runs through Wisbech, where Dad lived for almost 80 years. As a child he lived right on the riverbank but the river featured throughout his whole life and was the obvious place for his ashes.

Writing songs is clearly how I deal with things – I wrote two when my mum died … ‘Do you still walk?’ and ‘Before time‘.

About a time and place I knew in South Africa 1977. And an incredible event.

I had been hitch-hiking through the night from Johannesburg to White River (Witrivier) in the Eastern Transvaal. Dawn was just breaking as I was walking towards the town, in sight now but still some distance away. In the first light, I could see a figure moving, coming towards me. It was a man, running slowly, in full Zulu regalia, with spear and shield. He passed without a word … going … I know not where. I remember the beauty, the strength of the man, my amazement, and also my fear.

Pretty much all of the sounds on this are from the Yamaha TG55, with RX11 drums.