"This album was always going to be different," he says. "I did it in my own house, with a tight team that I trusted. There are no club beats. It's situated in the natural world, out of which I came and also where I live now. It started with birds. It was initially called 'Psalm for Birds'. It didn't work out that way finally, though birds are still in it. It goes out on birds. It's in part about the triumph of the natural world over religion. I've written new work for it, so there's a pushing forward. But there's also an archaeological aspect to it, a recovery of songs I'd long wanted to sing. It's more bespoke, more personal than other things I've done. I conceived it, wrote the new material, played on it, produced it. There's nothing on it that I didn't want, no pandering to anything. I wanted it to be experientially cohesive. I wanted to make the sound warm and fuzzy rather than clanky and mechanical. We worked hard at that. We used some synthesis but mainly real instruments, a lot of which I play myself. We were very careful about the microphones we used so that we'd get the right, warm sound.

"It's a very personal piece of work. It's about me, things I've felt and experienced. It's about children, how they can teach you and change you. Birds are there, stars too, things in the air, where sound is carried. It goes down into the darkness and back out. The first track is a key to it. It's about the transformative power of song and nature and how they hit me as a child, how I lifted off. You have to face up to what you are, and it was moments like that that made me a singer. The writing of it led to the writing of track five, 'The Day That You Were Born', a song for my daughter. I was thinking I'd be teaching her something, but she taught me. Track eight, 'Tuirimh Mhic Fhinin Dhuibh', is a lament we used to sing in the choir. I sang it for Gavin Bryars and asked him to imagine an arrangement with viola de gamba. It's dark as hell and he shines more b.......
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