‘Like ‘Volume Four’ I think this was partly a reaction against the very ambitious projects I’d done a few years before, but even more stripped-down. I wanted to create something powerful with what I thought would be the absolute bare minimum of forces that I could do it with: just piano, bass, drums and voices. It’s interesting what happens when you take out the guitar, it seems to get bigger rather than smaller, there’s a lot more space and the piano sounds huge. I think the album has a kind of timeless quality which I’m very pleased with.’