Hi All,
        I hope you're all well.  I wanted to blog to tell you the story of my new album, 'Nine Cents From Benelux'.

Firstly, let me take you back to 2006.  I'd just finished recording a previous album of mine, 'I'm Alive', with my long-time friend and producer Stephen Darrell Smith, a man of huge talent as both a producer and songwriter, and someone I am privileged to have worked with regularly for the last ten years.

Steve and I, once 'I'm Alive' was wrapped up, began a co-writing project which has been ongoing ever since, originally to write songs for established mainstream artists to record.  The first fruit of our labours was the song 'Keep Me In Your Heart', which we demoed with the help of two mutual friends of ours, the silver-tonsilled and nimble fingered Gavin Wyatt and Simon Johnson.

During the demo sessions for the song, it immediately became apparent that there was a startling and unusual musical chemistry between Gavin, Simon and I, and we decided to keep the song for ourselves.  You may remember 'Keep Me In Your Heart' as the opening track and single from last year's record 'Postcards From Valonia', recorded by Gavin, Simon and I as The Mercurymen...but that's another story entirely, and one you may well have heard already.

During the period of high energy and fertile creativity that always surrounds the inception of a new band, I was also diving into the writing cycle for what I had conceptualised as my next solo album.

Originally titled 'Black Light Phase', the album started revealing itself to me as an unwieldy nexus between dark folk music, rock, classical music and prog.  It seemed intent on creating itself, in some ways, with me cast as a passenger.  In an attempt to gain control over what was being written, I began obsessively whittling and fettling the songs and arrangements, thinking about it all the time and watching it grow and grow...I've always believed in keeping albums nailed down to ten or twelve tracks, but this was soon a 20+ track affair with a series of instrumentals, link pieces, everything but the kitchen sink.

I eventually realised I was creating something monstrously irrelevant and rambling, so hit upon the idea of condensing the entire thing down into five 10 minute 'suites', in the style of Roy Harper's 'Stormcock' album.

Thankfully, work on the Mercurymen album and live work kept me away from this increasingly ridiculous conceit, although three demo tracks from the sessions ('Every Road Leads Back To Where You Are', 'The Starlight Waltz' and 'Sleepyhead') were leaked onto the internet in 2008, something I found out only after receiving a PRS statement telling me that the three leaked tracks had received the most airplay I've ever had in Europe as a solo artist.

At the end of 2008, after a year of heavy live work and promotional duties with The Mercurymen, I landed back on planet earth with a heavy bump and realised that I needed to review my solo career carefully and press on with something that made sense.  'Black Light Phase' needed to be purged from the back of my mind, as it was in danger of becoming my own personal middleground between 'Chinese Democracy (ie taking forever to finish and being likely to disappoint at the end of it) and the Spruce Goose (ungainly, impractical, not much use to anyone and unlikely to fly far before hitting the ground).

So, the entirety of 'Black Light Phase' was ditched, with the exception of the two songs from the record that are both the most simple compositions and the songs that mean the most to me, 'Frozen Ocean' and 'Silver Wings Of Morning'.

I also hit upon a new idea-I'd made a lot of new friends whilst playing with The Mercurymen in 2008, having played live to over 100,000 people and had extensive radio and press coverage, and the time seemed right to reappraise my more overlooked solo work from previous years.

This is where 'Nine Cents From Benelux' began to take shape.  Several of the songs I've written in which I take most pride were, until now, languishing aboard out-of-print records and in need of a sonic spring-clean.  So, I took 'Frozen Ocean' and 'Silver Wings Of Morning' as a starting point, and combed through my back catalogue in search of hidden gems and songs in need of a new home.

Soon I hit upon 'Waiting Line', and 'Aimee', two country-folk laments from my now out-of-print solo debut 'Willow Park.  It was such a joy to revisit these songs, the simplicity of 'Aimee' being unlike anything I've written since, and a stark juxtaposition against the interesting instrumentation and emotional complexity of 'Waiting Line.  Up next was an unreleased version of Don McLean's 'Vincent (Starry, Starry Night)', recorded in the middle of the 'Black Light Phase' sessions as an attempt to reconnect with the way music connected with me as a child, as 'Vincent...' remains my first ever memory of music, and a song I must've heard as a very young boy.

Personally, the 'I'm Alive' album from 2006 was an artistic high-water mark in my career.  I'm immensely proud of the record and was deeply surprised and not a little hurt by the fact that, despite being critically garlanded from all corners and generating a goodly amount of radio airplay, it was a commercial disaster.  To this day, I've never put my name to a record that has sold less than 'I'm Alive', and it seemed only right to reprise its highlights for the tracklisting of 'Nine Cents From Benelux.

So from 'I'm Alive' come 'Train In Your Voice' (my favourite of all the songs I've written, and a very honest song about my growing up), 'Townes' Blues' (a personal tribute to the late, great Townes Van Zandt), 'Vacancy Here', the spiritual 'In My Time Of Dying' and 'Hazel County.

To give the songs the sonic depth and lustre that was missing on some of the earlier tracks, I packed the album off to the superb Robert Folkard of Penny Lane Studios in S.France, for a comprehensive remastering.

I can honestly say that I've never heard my music sound as good as it does on 'Nine Cents From Benelux'. It booms, barks, shimmers and twinkles in all the right places...the MP3s on this site really don't do it justice, the record must be heard on CD to really fully appreciate the wonder of what Robert did in the mastering process.

So, here it is: 'Nine Cents From Benelux'

1) Train In Your Voice
2) Waiting Line
3) Frozen Ocean
4) Townes' Blues
5) Aimee
6) Vacancy Here
7) In My Time Of Dying
8) Hazel County
9) Vincent (Starry, Starry Night)
10) Silver Wings Of Morning

It's been a long, hard and weird road to get to the completion of this album, but it's done and I hope you like it.

I promise that the next one won't take so long.

Jinder

PS it's released on 29th June. More on where you can get it from at a later date :-)