Some songs arrive very quickly, Playing for Time was not one of those. I had been working on it, on and off, for several years and have sometimes performed it live, without lyrics.

It's about time, mortality and memories and the idea that each of us has a planet full of memories which get stashed inside the brain. Just like the hit songs of their youth which trigger extraordinary responses in dementia patients, I am fascinated by the mechanisms, smells and sounds which allow memories to reopen.

-pg

“This Is Home is a love song. It began with inspiration from some of the great Tamla Motown rhythm sections so we’re trying to recreate that in a modern way, complete with the tambourine and handclaps. The groove I like a lot, Tony Levin does a great bass part there.

I did an unusual thing for me in that I tried doing this low voice / high voice thing, so you get this almost conversational voice at the beginning and the second part is a higher, more emotional voice. I thought that would be both intimate and emotive to put the two side by side.”

-pg

This song is based on an idea I have been working on to initiate the creation of an infinitely expandable accessible data globe: The Panopticom. We are beginning to connect a like-minded group of people who might be able to bring this to life, to allow the world to see itself better and understand more of what’s really going on.

Some of the ideas came from talking to Witness, Forensic Architecture and reading the Bellingcat book. They are all organisations that try and assemble what has happened from all sorts of clues and all sorts of data and put it all together.

-pg