I've still got a twinkle in me.

Since I was a kid, I've had an absolute obsession with particular kinds of American music. Mississippi Delta blues of the Thirties, Chicago blues of the Fifties, West Coast music of the mid-Sixties - but I'd never really touched on dark Americana.

Yeah, I think the point has well and truly sunk in by now, and I can just carry on. I don't even know what I'm looking for except a bit of hilarity and mild insanity musically, and I can get none of that by just delving into the history.

It's amazing, it's pumping, it's furious, it's anxious, it's happy and it's far more real than anything you'll ever experience in a Western city. Morocco is a living, pulsating entity which is rapidly changing all the time but there are parts of Marrakesh that carry on as they have done for a thousands years. The music is a reflection of that, of all times and all religions and of all the natural expectations and conditions of the people who live there.

Some audiences can shake and bang their heads on the stage to riffs all night long, but subtlety is an art that must be mastered if you're going to be remembered.

I listen to the crowds [laughs]... I like Blind Melon very much.

I'm not trying to be cosmic, it's just that everything's on a roll and that's how it is. The songs within the album discuss that very condition.