Hand Cranked was recorded between 2003-2005 with a very basic set up and some fairly primitive gear, one piece in particular - a simple sampler that I had received as a birthday present in 1998. This sampler, and the crude way in which it operates, became a key component in establishing a sound of my own. After Fi, I was writing a lot of instrumental music that was based around the guitar, sometimes working with my friend Richard Roberts, Marram was one of the tracks we had made together. The quirky quality of mechanical music boxes became a theme for my second album, there was a deliberate attempt to evoke the rickety nature of such machines without being too literal with it. Analogue tape also played a big role, various cassette machines were used for processing digital audio. During those years I had built up a small collection of tape machines, some of them bought for a few pounds from antiques markets, charity shops, car boot sales, jumble sales etc. each machine seemed to have its own character, some were more warbly than others, some had a grittier sound, some distorted in a beautiful way, some sounded particularly nice when the recording was played out of the built-in speaker. I learned from an early age, but even more so during those times of discovery as an artist, that ‘tape’ doesn’t have a sound - it has many sounds, many nuances, and the machines that record and play back tape have individual characters too. The overall sound of Hand Cranked was very much about exploiting the ‘voices’ or characters of these machines, rather than simply using them as a means to an end. When faced with a lack of equipment or budget, it seemed important to me to find affordable tools that made an important contribution to the art, it was about extracting something from very little.