A lot of driving - up to the studio to load up with gear, then across London to the studio - thank God for Radio 4. There was a brilliant piece in Woman’s Hour about an exhibition of quilts that is moving across America… some wonderful deep-south American accents. I love Radio 4… slightly obsessional about it, actually. The Shipping Forecast is the best thing on the airwaves.

Anyway, I arrived at the address. It was the wrong one - out by one street. Thanks Brian. The Irish guy laying the patio was most bamboozled by my arrival. Eventually I got the studio… owned by none other than John Reynolds. Fine company already. Inside, on bass, the quirky and rather wonderful Tom “Squarepusher” Jenkinson whose short piece in the film Lost In Translation just blew my head off. He really reminded me of my friend Conor Catchpole, but with a huge beard. His bass playing was the maddest I have ever heard… sometimes magical, sometimes cacophonous, but that was the spirit of the day. On keys (#3) was a lovely musician called John Hopkins - he’s an old friend of Leo Abrahams’. A great anchor man who just sat in the pocket and quietly made magic.
And of course Brian himself. He’s fun to be around in the studio. He gets excited. He says nice things when he likes what you’re doing. He is sideways and musically adventurous, challenging. And smiles a lot.

I handed over my T2 Morning Red for the team to get a brew on, and as we finished up, in walked Herbie Hancock. Just like that. A super-cool American black dude. 66 years old - looked about 50. He was laughing, smiling… seems like a lovely man. At this point it all gets a bit blurry, because we got to playing quite quickly. The first part of the session was shambolc due to poor monitoring and a bit of a wall of sound from the keyboards… but these problems were ironed out, and some space started to creep in. Then Herbie started to warm up. And he warmed up more… kept getting hotter until he was ripping those famous Hancock riffs, grooves and runs to the point where John Hopkins and I laughed out loud and just completely lost concentration. It was awesome. When that man is sitting on a clavinet groove, it is just spellbinding.

After lunch in an old haunt of mine - the Salusbury Food Store - it was back for a very enjoyable session. For some reason interesting stuff just started to happen. Some noisy things, but some unexpectedly musically different things. At one point I was just standing there, not playing - there was quite a bit of that - just listening and thinking that I’d just never heard anything like what I was hearing there. The combination of Herbie’s grooves, with Brian’s strange spoken word textures, John H’s ambient keys and Tom J’s mad bass was extraordinary. I’d say it will be a lot of fun to cut together into something else.

I’m finally getting my act together and starting the MoNIO site for the Music of Northern Irish Origin squad - so far Foy Vance, Duke Special, Iain Archer, The Ghears, Juliet Turner, Lafaro and a few other crazy types are getting on board… it will be great when its all up and running. I’ve left it open during the development phase, as the news and calendars are working. Its a bit stark just now… but its going to rock when I get all the content in. When I manage to get my 48 hour day for Christmas.

All-day session with Brian Eno, Herbie Hancock and Squarepusher. Mad, eh?

So I presume there's some kind of album on the way? The word on the dirt track is a record is due out sometime in mid-2007