VIRB

Finishing a record is like saying adieu to a friend on a train platform.

(Cheer up, Louis…)

The finality of it, the melancholy of it.

(Have a drink!)

How very kind of you. Cheers. I feel much better already. We're nearly there. There is always this feeling, familiar to mountain hikers, that the summit is receding as you walk towards it, but Ken and I, who have stuck to our two-days-a-week routine since the end of January, know full well that, soon, we'll have to find another reason to enjoy our morning pot of darjeeling in the control room. It shouldn't be too hard to do so.

What's left to do? Some tweaking here and there, some retouching of shades and nuances that probably won't be noticed by anyone but us, and two more visits to Regal Lane, one by Danny (and his double-bass), the other by Bertrand Burgalat, on the very last day of this month – on the day, incidentally, when Mute and Mute Song ('my esteemed publisher') up the anchor from Harrow Road, and transform their awful/marvellous offices and stock rooms into an all-night ephemeral club for those who've been linked to the label. So we'll finish the record and say farewell to a dear old place on the same day…A good thing I am not that superstitious (not that superstitious is quite different from not superstitious, mind you – you should see me when Arsenal play at home).

In the time before Protools and plug-ins and whatnots, one had to go through the ecstatic ordeal of 'THE MIX', also known as 'THE MESS', a stage at which many great tracks were utterly destroyed through incompetence, laziness and, in particular, fear (I'm speaking from experience). Things are done differently in 2007. We've been mixing all the time, from the very first take of the very first song – the piano part of a Randy Newman-esque song called 'Wild-Eyed and Dishevelled', which, fittingly in a way, will now close the album. On a E flat chord, played by horns, bassoon and piano. 'An Unknown Spring' (the album's title, and that's definite) will probably the best-ever record ever made by a London-based French songwriter who's not that far from his half-century. I am, dare I say it, very fond of it already; quite proud, and worried too. Those who've helped create it (like Alasdair and Mel of The Clientele) have said lovely things about what they've played ans sung along to. As to me, I hope that we took enough risks. I'd become disillusioned by the standard 'pop' format – intro, verse, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, middle-eight, chorus, and a coda if you're lucky – and frankly fed up with click-tracks and (more unfairly) drummers in general. Why does a track have to be in strict time? Why can't a melody unfold over more than eight bars? Why is there such rubbish in our streets and in the NME and even on BBC 6? This, of course, comes from a disgruntled pop craftsman who, until then, had adhered to the Brill Building rules like an oyster to its rock, rules which were just as strict as those legislating time, space and action in classical tragedy; it can be construed as a whim from a grumpy middle-aged man who can feel he's still got some sap in the branches, and is waiting, and waiting, and despairing for another spring. But I think the result will show it was more than that.

At the back of my mind has always been this fantasy of blurring the distinction between the 'pop' song and the lied. One for Pseud's Corner? No. One of the motivations behind the recording of Francis Poulenc's mélodies for 'Nusch', back in 1999, was to discover whether an untrained voice like mine could somehow drag dear Poupoule back to the music-hall without killing him en route. After a fashion, of course. This, in turn, fed 'Azure' and, later, 'The Wonder of it all', after the parenthesis of 'My Favourite Part of You', a record I would never disown, but which, considered now, strikes me as a detour, a diversion from the road I really wanted to follow.

So – to go back to more mundane things – no drummer in sight on 'An Unknown Spring'; we had great fun with shakers, maracas, claves, rainsticks and odd bits and bobs that could be hit or thrown about – but definitely no drums. Instrumentation? Piano, tack piano, clavinet, organ(s), bass, electric and double, guitars, bouzouki, melodica, flute, harp, bassoon, horn, glockenspiel, string quartet. I was hoping to create the most contrasted of my albums (including 'Azure', which may baffle some), sonically speaking at least; as to its mood, call it 'epic/pastoral'. Alasdair could sniff some William Blake-ish scents in the opening track, 'No Sun, No Sky at All'. You're too kind, Alasdair. And it is true that I use the word 'Jerusalem' in one of the songs. Ha!

Oh well. What's the time? 18:26 GMT. Time to go home, cook dinner (duck) and get ready for a Clientele gig at the 100 Club on Oxford Street. I might even sing bv's on one of the songs, with Mel. I know you're jealous. I'll tell you about it later.