People can rock together, people can do great things together, and that's what you love when you're working with characters and it's all going well.

I wanted to make an album that I wanted to put on myself and could listen to again and again. In the past I've done these records that are very in-depth. I love them and I'm very proud of them but I've always found it hard to listen to them again and again...they're very demanding.

All kinds of music comes out that I'm not prepared for. Some of it is good, some of it rubbish, but I kind of accept it all. That's the nature of stream-of-consciousness. You can't always come up with your most lucid material in the heat of the moment. I take that risk when I play live. I open up my mind, however fertile a creative springboard it is that evening.

I was not in a good space in my life, emotionally particularly, so I needed to do something to recharge my batteries emotionally and musically. I took a break and I learnt software and programming a little bit, and that's how I designed my live machine, which I've been using for years.

The most important thing for me - and the thing I get frustrated about when I don't achieve it - is momentum. Sometimes you hit on it quite naturally and other times it's a mad struggle.

I really wanted to maintain that bedroom philosophy to creating stuff.

I made an instrument which I'm really happy about, because I always wanted to have a machine that did this so once I established it as my unique tool, it was like, now I'm going to master it like a guitar.