Do I have to know where I’m going for you to follow me?

I know you can love an artist or band but not love everything they do. But when their next album goes up on pre-order and you haven’t heard it yet, how many do you support without even thinking? And what got you to that place?

By 2025 I was really wrestling mentally and emotionally with the inconsistency and inability to build something up with my Scrimshire project.

“The next record is guaranteed to fail”

Listeners (2019): vinyl sold out, loads of radio and press, it even made money… exciting!

Believers Vol. 1 (2020): tanked – garage full of vinyl, losses.

Nothing Feels Like Everything (2021): sold out, maybe my most successful record to date.

Paroxysm (2023): tanked – garage full of vinyl, more losses.

Music for Autumn Lovers (2024): happy days again.

This “one good, one bad” experience tracks back through my Wah Wah 45s albums too: Along Came the Devil (2009) – tanked; The Hollow (2011) – happy days; Bight (2013) – sunk without trace…

It’s become comedy to me. I joke to Sas about it… “next one is guaranteed to bomb.” She doesn’t laugh at the joke yet, but give it a few more albums.

By this trend in fact, Bring Our Light To Every Corner is headed for the skip (please, people, prove me wrong).

Impossible questions

So, when I asked Ben (Benjamin Smith, Echo Empire) to help with this confusion, I told him I was tired and I was giving the Scrimshire project a couple more years. After all these years I didn’t feel I could keep committing such a big part of my life to something that was never going to support me, my family and my future. I couldn’t blindly keep expecting a better outcome and this lifetime dream to come true.

I asked: Am I confusing people with inconsistent sounds across my records? Am I losing trust from supporters in that process? How can I find consistency in all this?

And: with some help on direction, a bit more discipline and a willingness to compromise on my own ideas, can I turn it around into a sustainable business?

I was prepared to do whatever it would require to mean I could continue to commit my life to it.

Can a dream come true after all this time?

Ben’s instinct was to lean into tracks with more space, the instrumentals. Celebrate my own writing and production, let it breathe, be more stylistically consistent and understandable.

From the 30+ tracks he picked six for one album and another five (including an 18-minute orchestral piece) that would be a follow up. We cast off a lot of music.

But in his own words:

“It sounds like a singular artist/composer’s vision. It’s very bold and ambitious.”

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Old friends

Between July and October 2025 I set about finishing this instrumental album.

I called Chris Boot back to record drums on two tracks. I asked my old friend Jake Telford, who played on my first album, to record soprano sax on two songs. I asked friends old and new to fill out choir parts and little instrumental moments I’d originally demoed myself. From Rob Hynd, one of my closest friends who’s been in bands with me for 25 years, to Daudi Matsiko, through to Jay Brown a.k.a. False Idah, who I started producing for in 2025.

I wanted this album to be anchored in everything that came before and everything I was now.

I wanted to keep asking for help, I wanted that to shape this record.

I mixed and mixed and mixed again, every track on the album until I knew I’d done the best work I could.

By September I was certain it was the best sounding record I’d made in my life, but…

When I finally stopped to take it all in, there was a weird problem.

Not having vocals made absolute sense. The album felt unified; it felt understandable; it gave space to the music and the listener.

But I weirdly didn’t love it.

I didn’t feel emotional about it. And I have to love it, right?

For the second time in this process there came a big lesson: There’s absolutely no point in doing this if I don’t make a record I love with all my heart.

I can handle the records tanking when they’re released, the important thing is that I believe in it and express my ideas fully.

I needed this experience in order to learn that truth again.

I had to follow the trail, I had to listen to someone else, trust in someone else, go all in, to the end of the road and discover what mattered most.

I’d like to live in a world where we can make art and make money, together

But when it comes down to it, making music I love is the priority. I’ll get a job if I have to.

Anyway, in the spirit of indecision, I mixed AND mastered three versions of the album (upside-down-head emoji). One without vocals, one with some vocals and a version with all the original vocals. I checked them repeatedly to decide which was the one…

And I sent it out to a selection of my favourite, appropriate record labels. I began nervously, for the first time in my life, the wait-for-the-rejection game.

By now of course, you know an offer for this record didn’t come, despite some nice acknowledgements. And so in March this year I unexpectedly ended up, at short notice (for reasons I can’t say), putting a June release date in the Albert’s Favourites schedule.

And we finally decided on which version to release.

Ten months ago, I didn’t even know I was already sitting on the bones of it.

“I Don’t Know How Much Longer I Can Do This”

This is where I was in the beginning.

I admit, I wasn’t having the most mentally sturdy 2025. Two extremely busy years at the label and the financial strain that came with that, had left me emotionally worn out.

As I saw it, I was eighteen years into making Scrimshire records, fifteen years into being self-employed, still financially insecure, with eight Scrimshire albums behind me and no consistent build up.

Paralysis

Sitting amongst hours of unreleased music, the variety of songs I’d accumulated between 2021 and 2025 was confusing me about who I was as an artist.

I was lacking confidence. I was convinced I was baffling listeners and making bad decisions. I was quickly becoming paralysed by the fear of making more.

I was (am) afraid of a lot of things but I’m working through it. Scared of looking a fool, so never going all in, and seeing things falter as a result. Afraid of being too bold, or too bland, of being seen, of not being seen. Spinning. Lost.

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But I Love This

Making records, sharing music, I want to do it always, I just needed some clarity and a path.

So, I finally started asking for help.

I wanted to actually let go and give control of my direction to someone who would guide me out of the woods. Jed Hallam, Love Will Save The Day, had once suggested to me the brilliant idea of a board of fan/friend advisors. At the time, the thought of organising that sent me into more paralysis. But I did start making calls to friends…

Some of the people I spoke to thought it was time to approach other labels, take the business end away from me too, so I could finally just be a writer and a producer.

“Tell Me Honestly”

But I would still need to know what I was bringing them. I needed an independent listener. One who wouldn’t be worried to tell me what they thought.

I decided to ask my friend Ben (Benjamin Smith aka Echo Empire, our longtime PR at Albert’s Favourites and manager to James Alexander Bright) whose music taste I love and honesty I love even more.

I sent him several folders of songs in differing stages of production. I labelled a few pieces I thought were the magic but I personally hadn’t fitted together. I put in some random stuff, I had all sorts in there, maybe three or four albums worth of music, collaborations with Amanda Whiting, Joshua Idehen, K.O.G., Margomool, Dwight Trible and many more.

Liberation

The first surprise was that letting go was really powerful, it was liberating. Even so I expected coping with the feedback to be difficult, I’ve been so very bad at it in the past.

But then again, producing projects for others in the last few years has really helped me kill my ego. It’s reduced the defensiveness about my ideas. Now I focus more on the greater good and the joy of the process. Discovering different ideas and exploring them with all my energy is a joyful experience.

So, when Ben’s thoughts started feeding back, I was surprised again that I was genuinely excited by it all.

“Are You Up For Something Radical?”

It was late July 2025 when Ben called me. The sun was warm and I was standing outside Crystal Palace pool about to go for a swim.

“Lose the vocals.”

I took a deep breath and then I laughed, a lot. To hear a confident, new idea I’d never have considered felt like a new world opening up.

“You’re the focus, establish your craft, show off your work, let the songs breathe.”

And this is where album nine finally began…

But I’m not alone, am I?

The endless advice, insight, solutions we’re surrounded by everyday only make me feel more lost. How have I not packaged up 47 years of living, 32 years of music making, 17 years of running labels, 9 years of marriage into something concise, useful and engaging yet?

If you know me, you know I struggle to see the value held in my brain (I’m working on it – thank you NHS talking therapy) but admitting to feeling lost is starting to help me see “lostness” as a useful place.

My Help Habit

At some point asking for help stopped being something that scared me. Now it’s like a habit that keeps bringing me into positive new places.

Most weeks it connects me to people, it breaks me out of my head, it gets me on the phone, it takes me out for coffee.

Running labels taught me so much about asking for help and finding it in abundance. It seemed easier when I desperately wanted to help another artist succeed. But I’m not always so good at applying what’s good for others to myself.

In the last year though, I’ve started thinking about it a lot more and it feels different. This time I got a whole album out of it.

It’s OK To Get Lost

I spent two whole hours last night with Sas (my wife and the main sufferer of my endless overthinking), discussing how to explain this lost feeling and not seem negative. We both went to bed feeling slightly more lost.

If I admit I feel lost and confused, will you think I can’t run a label, produce your record, mix your album?

I don’t do well with certainty and never really have. The more certain I try to be about something, the less certain it becomes in my mind. Too many questions, contradictory voices. It’s a strength when you think of it as empathy, but it’s equally infuriating when you just want to say, “this means this” and have everyone cheer, hit the like button and subscribe to your Substack/YouTube/Instagram.

Right now, I’m just trying to own my lostness and accept that I still do good, occasionally great things despite (or even because of) it.

And it genuinely is the story of an album, which I genuinely want to ask you to help me celebrate and share.

Dealing with all this has led to me making some of the most beautiful music of my life. Maybe the songs I’m proudest of so far.

Please Help Me

This is the bit where I ask you. And if you want to ask me for help, don’t be shy, but me first…

These coming songs were created as places to inhabit, to rest and embrace lostness and fear and love and being alive. I’m going to try and create moments for us to experience this music together, to share in it in a moment. The first one is next week, and it’s a big one.

I’ve set up a live stream on YouTube. I’ll be in my living/listening room at 8pm on Wednesday 22^nd, ready to hit play and then have a little time with you after to chat about it all.

Please come and join me. Head to YouTube now, subscribe and hit the “notify me” button.

And if you want to keep hearing about how being lost led me to making an album?Then please subscribe here too.

Thank you. x

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I want to share a piece of music with you at 8pm on 22nd April. I’m going to host a listening session on my YouTube channel, live from my living room, playing you something completely new and, at that time it will still be unreleased.

The piece is 14 minutes and 54 seconds long. But if you want to stay after we can have a little chat about it too and I can share some news.

Normally I just send my newsletter family a link to hit at their leisure and listen to exclusive new music. But I really want to do this next one together. So I’m going to face the fear of failure, of no one caring and turning up, because I do really care about this music and I can only hope that being brave and doing this will be for all our benefit.

I worked on this song slowly through most of 2025, but there was a moment with some friends in May, when late into the night I drunkenly shared a demo version. Their love for discovering something completely new, a surprise from start to finish, I felt so incredibly happy, it felt like such a unique moment, gave me energy to push on with the project and everything that came after.

So I really want to do that again, with you this time - drinking optional. I hope you’ll love it.

Come to YouTube and hit the "notify me" button for a reminder on the day