Interview for Indescribable Night
Lucio (Italian Magazine)

1) First the Ravishing Beauties, then the Dream Academy, later on the Familiar with Roger Eno and now, after 15 years of career, Indescribable Night, your first solo album. What does this album mean to you?

People are like onions. They consist of many layers. The formation of my first solo album started off as a far off fantasy years and years ago and slowly developed a life of its own. My style of writing developed almost unconsciously, as I was doing all those other things. Eventually I became aware that I had to get this stuff on tape and happily that coincided with All Saints giving me the opportunity. I had to overcome all sorts of insecurities to believe that what I was doing was valid so personally, for me, it is a great achievement.

2) The album shows a lot of traces of your classical music studies, but at the same time there are a lot of other influences. I think it can be defined as the result of your staying and working in the music world for so many years...

This is to a large extent true. For example, through working with Van Morrison for three and a half years I was initiated, as a player, into the jazz idiom. However, the different styles I've drawn on reflect the kinds of music that have really moved me as a listener, an emotional human being. It is the feelings behind the styles that matter more to me, they are my real influences.

3) I define it as an album for dreaming under the shadows of the night. What do you think about?

That says it really well, thank-you!

4) How would you define it?

I wanted it to be something uplifting even though I was dealing with intense emotional subjects. Something cathartic. Looking upwards to a spiritual light from a place of darkness. I like music that reflects some of the subtler waves and ripples of human experience. I'm tired of the repetitive, generalised clichés that we are bombarded with by the media, and wanted to get as far away from that as I could.

5) I've been struck so much by the arrangements of the album, I think they're wonderful. It seems you paid a lot of attention to them...

I'm so relieved when I've actually completed a song that doing the arrangements is a treat, a chance to play around with your new toy. The song is like the blueprint, the source, the original drawing. The arrangement fills in the colours and I do enjoy picking particular instruments to give depth or to add different hues or textures to the picture. The arrangement part of the songwriting process really gives you the chance to create your own distinct style, something I really wanted to do having worked within the confines of other people's styles for so long.

6) How important was the work of Joseph Racaille for the arrangements and the production?

Joseph Racaille is a French composer, arranger and producer. I definitely wanted someone else's input. His style seemed to perfectly compliment mine especially as we share an interest in the arrangements of French chanson of the 40's, 50's and 60's. On some songs I reached a point where I could go no further so we would discuss the approach and he would then develop the arrangements with his own special magic.

7) The lyrics of the album seem to be close to the interior world. What can you say about this?

I would get a musical idea, then I would try and figure out lyrically what feelings or images the music seemed to be saying. Sometimes it's like detective work...what is my unconscious getting at? Translating the spontaneous into the formulated. The music is close to the interior world too, but for me it comes from another part of the brain. The lyrical idea might be spontaneous but the crafting of language uses the intellect more.

8) You said that you love reading, and in this album there's a song inspired by a poem "Mis Adioses". So, how much can a literary work influence your way of writing songs and especially lyrics? How much are you influenced by the things you've read?

Books feed and nurture my inner world a great deal. They can be a lot more inspiring that the real world and a lot safer. The influence of things I've read is strong but subliminal. I absorb things I read just as I absorb real life experiences and it all goes into the same old creative whirlpool. It can be unrecognizable by the time it comes out in a song. Occasionally though, as with Mis Adioses, a piece or poem will instantly set you off on a lyric idea. On the first song, There Is Sweet Music Here That Softer Falls, I've taken certain lines of a Tennyson poem (The Lotus Eaters) and arranged them into a song. I am influenced by people's use of language, how concise and yet lyrical you can be, how people employ world to exactly portray complicated interior landscapes. I think about that sort of thing a lot.

9) What are you reading now?

I've just finished an autobiography by Eva Hoffman called Lost in Translation. Her family emigrated to the USA from Poland when she was 13 years old and the book recounts the extraordinary emotional impact it had on her and how, only after 20 to 30 years, did she feel fully at home at every level. I'm current reading a book by one of my favorite writers Wallace Stegner (USA) called Recapitulation.

10) Some years ago now you became a member of Van Morrison's band. How do you feel working with a living legend? What kind of impression does it make?

I've now left the band to get on with my solo career. I learnt a lot working with him but it was time to move on. It wouldn't have been a comfortable relationship for him or myself if I had perceived of him as a "living legend" so I tried not to.

11) Do you keep a nice memory of Dream Academy?

Over the years you tend to forget the bad things and remember the good things. Thankfully I have reached that stage now. We were dropped after our third album didn't "do" anything but I was going to leave anyway.

13) Two years ago you told me that you would like to make an album of French songs. What about this project? Are you still going to do it?

I was really excited about the idea at the time and it nearly happened but then...it didn't. I got very busy with Van after that so it faded in importance and then the idea of doing my own stuff (some of which has a strong chanson influence) just took over.