4. Nevada

One of those mini-tunes/half-riffs which develops slowly, taking on extra layers and mood-shifts, before suddenly, the sun breaks through, the structure clicks and it's a song.

For me, the catalyst was the queasy unease of travelling around London in summer 2005: the initial twitch that life might end at any second gradually giving way to a background rumble of low-level paranoia.

I cope with pressure by pulling back from the picture. This time, I took the image of my vulnerable, cramped body jammed between a clutch of potentially lethal commuters and lifted myself out of there: up over the top of the train, through the earth and high into the sky, hovering over a complete view of the Tube network.

It was soothing to think of the process as purely mechanised: trains creaking and hauling themselves out of the stations, gently gliding in to predetermined stop-points; doors obediently sighing open and bleeping shut; circular routes carefully carved out to either double-back or return on themselves.

Nevada feels like that to me: a benign, cycling, mantra-like riff acting as a kind of turbine to propel the hulking drums; a fragile synth underlay enhancing the sense of being carefully transported by some gentle giant.

I also went a bit mental in Nevada in early 1995, but that's
another story.