The following are variations on the text from the Love And Endings ‘lyrics/song notes’ booklet: The 2011 no-man band chemistry was as strong as any I’d experienced in 29 years of performing. In a live context, certain songs felt immense in their sonic scale. As in the rehearsals, an element of creative surprise was ever-present. Despite sounding unlike any previous … Read More

This time, in two tenses, a current account of the making of an album, rather than a retrospective one. ——— “Stories Come out of other stories Lead to other stories New memories of machines” Composed, recorded, mixed and mastered between April 2006 and December 2010, Memories Of Machines’  Warm Winter is an album that carries more significant personal history with … Read More

Boosted by the positive response to Returning Jesus and excited at the new directions some of the album’s songs suggested, in early 2002, No- Man started work on what turned out to be the most deeply personal and most quickly realised album in the band’s history. Only Rain, Returning Jesus and Slow It All Down hinted at a more spacious … Read More

Almost as soon as the closing notes of Things Change had faded, Steven and I were back in the studio eager to write an even more epic set of songs than those heard on Flowermouth. The two main pieces that emerged were Love You To Bits (the almost legendary 20 minute ‘disco symphony’) and Song About The Heart (a short … Read More

Along with Wild Opera, My Hotel Year is the least loved album I’ve ever made and, in some ways, it’s the album of mine I love least as well. After the airy and atmospheric Together We’re Stranger and in the lull that follows the release of any No-Man album for me, I felt that I had to do something completely … Read More

Recorded in the Summer of 1993 and released a year later, Flowermouth was the album that almost brought No-Man’s career to its knees, while simultaneously giving us the courage to carry on. Although we’d liked many of the songs, we felt the previous year’s Loveblows And Lovecries had been slightly compromised by a number of external and internal pressures, so … Read More

Between 1987-89, combining then contemporary technology with a spirit of adventure, the foundations for the more ethereal and atmospheric aspects of No-Man’s music were laid. For Steven and me, this was a time of getting to know one another creatively and trying out whatever came into our heads, whenever it came into our heads. After years of separately struggling to … Read More