i wander blinking into the light this month with my first single in three years. it's called 'guinea pig'. i called it 'guinea pig' because for three years i temporarily forgot how to write or produce have any confidence in my songs or production, and when i finally found a new method of tricking my mind into working again - by telling it i was only messing around and not really working - it felt rather experimental; hence 'guinea pig'. how, you may ask, does a veteran of 25 years in the music business forget how to write. well, it is a question i have been asking myself for three years, to the point where the question became so repetitive that it stopped being the hard hammer with which i initially beat myself over the head saying 'don't be so stupid, just sit down and focus', but became instead a slow steady drizzle that wore down my confidence. i ignored it for ages and looked the other way, but in the end, i realised you have to put your hat and coat on and go out in it, or you'll end up with no friends and not like yourself very much. still, i have justin martin and claude vonstroke to thank, who gave the unsolicited thumbs-up to the rough mix that i roadtested in miami this year. i was about to shelve it, but they got me to finish it. i must also thank the extremely gifted singer, julia biel, who took the lyrics i wrote for it and wrenched them into a melody for me. i say all this, not fishing for your sympathy, but merely to point out that doubts come to all of us, and creativity and inspiration is not sitting cool and inviting every time you open the fridge. of course i am now quietly glowing with pride to read the positive reactions from some of my DJ peers upfront of its release on october 20; idiotically proud actually; to the point where i am even shallow enough to tell myself the track was great all along and i just couldn't see it. i listened to pete tong play it on radio 1 this week like an excited kid hearing his first single on the radio. i even listened again on the re-stream. looking back, i remember being in hull with tracey when our second single together as EBTG, 'each and every one', entered the UK Top 40 back in 1984. even though we weren't invited on the show to perform it, we knew it was going to be on the chart run-down on top of the pops as a new entry. we sat in our little flat and took a photograph of the TV screen as it went by, our gawping faces reflected in the glare of the screen. i've still got it somewhere. enthusiasm is what you need, you see. even when it is drizzling.