Now

The forthcoming album is the solo debut that almost never was. In the 1990s I was lead singer and co-songwriter of Oxford-based band Unbelievable Truth, which released the album Almost Here on Virgin Records in 1998, and second album Sorrythankyou on Shifty Disco in 2000. When I quit the band in 2000, I swore never to get involved in music again… But after five years following a totally different career path, I found myself with a collection of songs that I had begun writing despite myself. The songs began as music written for my own benefit, but for the first time I was solely responsible for the entire writing process from start to finish, and that was liberating. Things that once seemed complicated now became simple. A lot of the songs on the album are about this happening to me in all kinds of ways.

It might have been an odd choice for someone who’s trying to launch a solo career, but I called on one of my oldest friends and erstwhile colleagues in Unbelievable Truth, to help me make an album. Nigel Powell, now drumming for DiveDive and following his own solo project named the The Sad Song Co , agreed to produce the album. Later in the process our fellow UT band-member Jason Moulster came on board to play bass on the album.

Working with Nigel and Jason again took me back to the early days of UT, writing and recording our first album, Almost Here, when it was all excitement and creativity. Nigel and I have been friends since we met at Abingdon School at the age of twelve and that friendship has survived despite my serial band-quitting – I left UT at least twice, both times to go back to work involving Russia. Though I started learning Russian when I was 12, my fascination with the place first crystallised when I travelled to the Soviet Union in 1987 (aged 15). It’s been the other driving force in my life ever since. I studied Russian at university, and spent a year living in Moscow in 1992-1993 when the country was at the height of upheaval. In 1996, when I bolted from UT for the first time, I headed back to Moscow to work as a translator for Greenpeace. After quitting UT again in 2000, I went back to university to study Russian politics and business, and have been working in that field ever since. After years zigzagging between Russia and music, it finally occurred to me that if there are two things in life you want to do, you don’t have to choose between them. And it was time to have another crack at this music lark.