“I think what I wanted to do was meet someone who knew more than me about songwriting structure and progressions and middle eights and things that more traditional writers write and I don’t usually employ.”

I’m not really frightened by experimenting – that’s the main thing. I really like mixing very old beautiful pieces that are from thrift shops or that have some historical value with quite new futuristic things.

It’s very much to do with how I’m feeling … I love to be experimental and use eclectic mismatched things and put them together to see what third entity is created!

I did gardening and cooking and drawing and reading to try take the pressure off the music – just being eclectic and putting the fun back in and bringing more innocence in again is really important.

I’ve hidden behind my hair more than clothes. Sometimes having long hair with a fringe is very useful when you don’t want to look at people. I used to have very short hair, but long hair is my thing – a black nocturnal shield.

I think the best cure is to stop doing the thing that you think you should be doing and go and have a bit of fun in another medium, maybe other crazy things.

I like to get dark sometimes and then come back out into the light.

Dad was an amazing storyteller and illustrator, which he did in his spare time – very inspiring and dramatic.

I’d love to win a Grammy! Not ambitious or anything. And just having a really lovely bunch of kids and a happy family life, would be good for me.

They say for every high high there must be a low low low low low

And in a repressed society, artists fulfil a sense of harking back to instant gratification, or immediate expression, by doing things that function on the edge of society, or outside of what is conventionally accepted.

I always think that the exceptional people are those who remain outsiders but still communicate on a grand scale. I think I want everyone to feel more free, and so I feel really claustrophobic on behalf of lots of people.

I find it really interesting that people are shocked by the raw, natural representation of a woman and a man’s body.

We are bits of energy floating about in various guises, and when we die we rejoin the big cosmic soup of the universe.

Music’s free and music’s for everyone to enjoy and express and interpret. It transcends countries and times and decades.

Exploring the different avenues and being open to synchronicity and crazy coincidences and little things happening is part of going on your journey to investigate – and the little jewels you might find along the way, my job is to bring those back home and put them on my album.

I’d tell everyone to come in naked in full body paint.