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.