Going to the Sahara Desert and meeting the Touareg band Tinariwen was a life-changing experience. All through that time, I have just carried on learning and meeting musicians, and I keep finding links between different forms.

Sometimes language is not enough.

Going to the Sahara Desert and meeting the Touareg band Tinariwen was a life-changing experience. All through that time, I have just carried on learning and meeting musicians, and I keep finding links between different forms.

I have a lot of experience in playing all sorts of venues. And one of my interests is to understand what constitutes the vibe of a place and what makes one concert different from another. You can't fully measure or calculate these things, yet they are absolutely evident once you're on stage.

When I was growing up, my idea of Led Zeppelin was all epic lasers, castles, and ten-minute drum solos - that sort of thing.

In a lot of African instruments, you find a rattle, and sound engineers have a hard time making sense of it.

One of my interests is to understand what constitutes the vibe of a place and what makes one concert different from another.