Ah, my first born. With its all-white appearance it looks suspiciously like my milkman, but I've learnt to let it go. Recorded from April to October 2001 at Astra studios in Kent, England. When I won GOTY in November 2000 I spent a very short period thinking about my next move - I'd always wanted to make my own album and my new award seemed like a good excuse. I had demoed a bunch of instrumentals I'd written over the previous couple of years and had about five that I was really happy with - if I was going to make an album the material had to be amazing with no fillers, particularly as the CD was going to be of the instrumental rock genre (those records can have a high boredom factor). 'Until', 'Zavoov', 'Pretzels n' Cheese' and 'Daydream in Green' were written and demoed between January and April 2001 and I ultimately had nine instrumentals that I felt represented the best material I could write and I was very excited and anxious to start making the album. I couldn't decide who to have as my band because I knew a lot of great players who were all good friends too, so I basically formed two bands and split the songs between them. I then had some friends guest in a couple of places, including my oldest chum Rich Barnard who is quite a name around the London acoustic circuit. One thing I do need to clear up is that the piano in the song 'Zavoov' was played by Paul Jacques - because of my inability to stop trying to be funny I credited him for "Joanna", which is cockney rhyming slang for "Piano" (pron. "Pee-an-ah"). It turns out that many people north of the Watford Gap, let alone those from over seas, did not pick up on this and as a result Paul has gone largely uncredited so - the fantastic piano playing on 'Zavoov' was by Mr. Paul Jacques. After it had been mastered I set about creating a cover design, as I've always liked a spot of painting and what not. I painted a self portrait from a black and white photo I had (I imagined the colour myself - I-thank-you). After pressing, the CD had cost just under ten thousand pounds to make and it was released in December 2001 on my own newly formed label 'Up To Speed Records'. I still love this album and it makes me proud. The wife of my mind is currently gestating our second, which is gonna be very much the next level in terms of both composition and playing.