Full of Noises on BBC Radio 3 - a geek's dream come true!

I was an unusual musical nerd from a young age in terms of my listening diet. My brick-shaped mono cassette player (these were pre-ghettoblaster days) was a pretty constant companion. I didn't have many tapes: Handel's Water Music was number one for a very long time until it stretched and distorted to such an extent that even I couldn't bear it. I had to resort to Benjamin Britten's Curlew River after that instead... a tougher proposition. A few years later, my big brother - considerably cooler than me - organised a family whip-round to scrape together enough for an early model Walkman for my birthday. He accompanied this with a copy of Super Trouper, concerned (rightly) that I was becoming irretrievably dull. Sadly, Abba didn't catch on, and I soon replaced it with a much-loved cassette of Simon Standage's classic Four Seasons with The English Concert.

But it was Radio 3 that really shaped my listening over the years. My father, before me, always swore that he had been educated by the 'Third Programme' and, to this day, R3 has an uncanny knack of mirroring my musical interests at any given time. Yes, there is a fairly high proportion of the old warhorses - Brahms symphonies, Beethoven sonatas, Verdi operas, and so on. But this is diluted by a surprisingly adventurous streak that takes in experimental music, spoken word, jazz, ambient electronica and music by lesser-known (often female) composers.

Imagine, then, my childish delight on discovering that a track from the new Full of Noises album - en plein air - was to be played on R3 Late Junction, presented by Verity Sharp, on Thursday 23rd May.  Late Junction is an incredibly precious thing in the modern one-size-fits-all musical world: after they've played all the Bach, Haydn and Shostakovitch during the day, those nice inquisitive people at Radio Three give airspace to the otherwise unheard - Kalimba players from Zambia get their moment in the limelight, alongside Appalachian song, avant-garde electronica, Galician bagpipers and, er...me. Weird music of the World unite!

The show is on iPlayer for a while - click here for the link (Full of Noise can be heard at about 17:30) but, in case you miss it, the track that Late Junction played was this one: The Meadow - 23/04/17 - 5am. It was recorded outside on the tiny island of St Agnes, Isles of Scilly, at dawn on a beautiful Easter sunrise. The dawn chorus was deafening and the island cockerel was in full voice...

The whole album was structured around a series of twelve improvisations recorded over a year on St Agnes. The recordings capture not only my playing but whatever ambient sounds of the island were occurring at the time - wind and sea, birdsong, the day-to-day noises of human activity... The hope was to distill the essence of particular places at particular times, rather as a landscape artist, setting up his easel in front of a view, would aim to capture the fleeting effects of light.

Back in the studio, alongside my producer John Elliott (of London-based folk/electronic ensemble The Little Unsaid - a man of unique and subtle musicianship) I added piano and electronica, aiming always to remain faithful to the atmosphere and circumstances of the original improvisation. The piano fragments on The Meadow, for example, hint at the opening of Bach's St Matthew Passion (it was recorded at Easter) and the track uses the field recording of the island cockerel to reference the part played by that thrice-betraying bird in the Easter story. 

​If you would like to find out more about ​en plein air, including streaming, downloading or purchasing the entire album, you can do so here.