Powder Dry (2024) marks a significant “first” in my forty-year career: it is the first album I have written, performed, and produced entirely on my own. Following the release of Butterfly Mind, I found myself in a rare period of creative drought that was eventually broken by a suggestion from Brian Hulse to “go it alone.” This shift in approach proved to be the ultimate catalyst; without the distractions or compromises of collaboration, I felt a newfound freedom to explore my most experimental and “spiky” instincts. I recorded 26 pieces in total, eventually whittling them down to 16 “fat-free” tracks that move restlessly through a 40-minute duration.

Musically, the album is a genre-blurring journey that retraces my early post-punk and electronic interests while pushing into entirely new territory. It features everything from the industrial pummelling of “Idiots At Large” and the paranoid, propulsive electro-pop of “Rock Hudson” to the shimmering, delicate balladry of “When Summer Comes.” I found myself on a voyage of textural discovery, often using counter-intuitive methods to create sound such as recording my son’s budget Fender Strat copy acoustically through a series of microphones and virtual effects to achieve a uniquely lo-fi, haunted quality.

While I handled the entire performance and production, I was fortunate to have Steven Wilson act as a vital sounding board and mix the album in both stereo and Surround Sound. He was incredibly encouraging of the record’s “feverish” energy and its departure from my customary trope of patiently-built atmospheres. Released as my debut for the Kscope label, Powder Dry feels like a creative purging and a total reset, a collection of cinematic vignettes that embrace both my love for classic singer-songwriter directness and my desire for avant-garde exploration.