Obviously I can't rely on my group, but I don't want to rely on a laptop just to play back some backing tracks, that's not the way I do things really.

I grew up in the South Wales valleys, but I think my parents realised from quite an early age that if they hadn't sent me to boarding school I would have probably gone to prison. And it cost them absolutely everything.

I tend to work in the mornings, then take a few hours off in the afternoon to walk the dog, and then come back and work in the evening. So, if I can remember my pre-dog walking music when I get back then that's fine, I'll kind of commit to those bits, but if I can't remember them I'll just move on to something else.

I'm not a great fan of people who suddenly manage to pull out the whole track sounding perfect from a laptop. That doesn't feel like any kind of show to me.

The thing I've learned is it's good to restrict your palette somewhat. I will try and, say, use two or three instruments on one track. You learn, after a while, they're all good at certain things and other things fall outside of the natural areas they work well in, so I tend to stick with what they do best.

I do take a computer to do some processing live and I might use a couple of plug-in synthesisers, 'cause obviously you can take quite a lot of power in terms of sound generation on a computer that I can trigger from a couple of keyboards. And it means I don't have to take some of my vintage stuff and have it trashed by various airlines which has happened in the past. But I still take some vintage stuff with me, I'll take that risk because I like using all that stuff.

Sometimes I just experiment quite a lot. I've always got my computer set up to record so I'll just record a sort of library of ideas [that] I'll either come back to or use as they stand.