The Moat album is collaboration between myself and Niko Röhlcke from the Swedish band Weeping Willows. Niko was born in Germany and moved to Sweden when he was 12 years old and grew up in Stockholm. The project was conceived by our mutual friend musician/engineer/producer Sigge Krantz who had the idea that we would work well together. This is the result. We managed to combine our abilities and experience into a unique partnership that gave birth to some kind of Anglo/German/ Nordic hybrid. Niko a multi instrumentalist played nearly all the lead guitars as well as pedal steel, accordion, bass, baritone guitar, acoustic guitar, keyboards and piano. Although we sat down with guitars and wrote some of the songs together such as A Murdered Swan, others were pieces of music that Niko had already composed that he asked me to write lyrics and a melody for. One of these Try And Make Sense became the song on the closing credits of the Swedish/German 5 film length collaboration, Arne Dahl TV Series that Niko wrote the incidental music for. His work with film and dance means that he writes evocative instrumental music, perfect for me to take away and write a melody and lyric around. Another example of this was The Sound Of You, this piece Sigge gave to a string quartet to arrange – Mikael and Mia Marin and Leo Svensson really did a fantastic job. Other folkier songs such as Felice and If I Had a Dream were conceived by me and Niko added a chord or an arrangement idea or a mandolin part to realise the song. Please Please Please took us into different territory with Torbjörn Svedberg playing the marimba, Erik Nilsson on the drums and Rafael Sida Huizar on congas. Anders Herenestam and Anders Graham Paulsson played drums and bass and Malin My Wall on violin. She had played with Brian Wilson’s touring band for the Pet Sounds album and the enigmatic Arthur Lee Love shows for the Forever Changes album. I saw the Love show at New York Town Hall before I knew Malin My. We had a brass section on A Murdered Swan including Jonas Wall, (Malin My’s husband), Jonas Lindeborg and Mats Äleklint. A real musical melting pot, apart from all the Swedish musicians, Rafael is Mexican, I’m English and Niko is German. One last comment on this record, the opening track Let Me Go is about releasing my Dad who is 92 at time of writing to go and be with my Mum who died 6 years ago. They were together for 60 years and he is terribly lonely without her. He sprays her perfume in the house and has their wedding day photograph leaning against her pillow on their bed.