Following the release of ‘Great Spans of Muddy Time’ in March, I’ve decided to release a new EP called ‘Alternate Lands’ on 26th November. The material on ‘Spans’ was largely left untouched in its crushed and saturated format, having been salvaged from cassette tapes after losing session files in a hard drive failure, whereas ‘Alternate Lands’ takes sketches first started on those same tapes and reimagines their potential.

Although these songs were crafted in the same time period as ‘Spans’, I’ve taken them in a direction that resonates with where my head is at currently, while also signposting to the way my sound is heading for the next album. Across the three original tracks here, the production is more full and direct than at any point in my career, favouring upfront vocals and solid rhythms as opposed to hazy atmospherics.

I also chose to include a cover of one of my favourite songs by Robyn Hitchcock, ‘Autumn Is Your Last Chance’. Hitchcock has always been influential on my music, perhaps more in spirit and feeling than as a touchstone for sound. My cover was recorded direct to cassette around the time of making ‘Spans’ and blends my love of Hitchcock’s compositions with the sort of sound world that people may associate me with.

As for the artwork, I wanted something that was conceptually similar to ‘The Floating Feather’ by Melchior d’Hondecoeter that we used for the cover of ‘Spans’. Further delving into the archive of the Rijksmuseum revealed a painting of shocking compositional similarity by the painter Herman Henstenburgh, favouring lighter pastel shades instead of the dramatic contrasts of d’Hondecoeter’s work. This distinction seemed to mirror the relative lightness found on ‘Alternate Lands’, altogether offering a different vision of the same psychic landscape.