I was going through a break up. I was depressed... I really did need to do something. Recording an album was a great escape. I don't know what would have happened if I wouldn't have started to work.

What you learn from working with other performers and musicians is invaluable, really, and can only help you grow. I mean, if you spend your whole life focusing on yourself, you're not really learning much.

Well, as resources inevitably disappear [in Africa], people have to make do with a lot less. You have to be much more ingenious with a lot less, and accept that you can't get your perfect tuna sandwich on a street corner.

More and more, cultural groups are cross-pollinating, and we're getting much more interesting art as a result.

There's need to be some sort of disturbance in your psyche for creativity to be sparked.

I'm an English songwriter/composer, working in Mandarin and trying to find something about Chinese culture that I really relate to and respect and feel some genuine emotions for - and it's quite hard, the pentatonic scale, and that, in a way, is why I think it works. Because I'm forced to limit myself to quite strict rules about what I did. Maybe that's how I avoided pastiche.

I can't be bothered anymore about giving songs titles.