On the way two and from gigs, I quite often have Radio 4 on - I tend to listen to more speech than music these days in the car - and this gig was no exception. I was on my way to play a gig hosted by Steve Parsons (whose music you should check out, by the way) and I heard that Aung San Suu Kyi had been freed from house arrest.

I have to be honest, and say that although I was aware of this lady, I wasn't an expert on the political situation in Burma, and I still don't understand it all, but during the programme, they read an extract from an essay which was written while imprisoned.

"There is so much that is beautiful and so much that is wrong in my country. In the evenings when I look out to the lake from my garden, I can see the tattered beauty of the casuarinas, the tropical lushness of the coconut palms, the untidily exotic banana plants and the lushness of the barbed wire fence along the edge of the shore. And across the still waters festooned with dumps of water hyacinth is the mass of a new hotel built with profit rather than elegance in mind. As the sun begins to go down the sky lights up in orange hues. The Burmese refer to this hour as the time of blazing clouds and also the time when the ugly turn beautiful because the golden light casts a flattering glow on most complexions."

It was this "Blazing Clouds" phrase that really stuck with me. This idea that how ugly or beautiful someone looks depends on the light we look by, the light we live by.

As I began to run with this idea, I wanted one of those kind of rambling, stream-of-thought bridge sections, (a little bit of a Sting influence there I think) and the ideas that came were pointing me more to phrases I heard people use about heaven. Maybe there's a light that helps us to see the best, to see the beauty in one another.

"Letting grace illuminate our hearts, like blazing clouds"

Musically, we had some fun with this one. It was my first attempt at playing the banjo - Phil's wonderful old banjo which has a great vibe, but doesn't really stay in tune particularly well. A little bit of country never did anyone any harm (just a little bit, mind!).

You can go here for downloads and here for CD orders (including CD bundles) if you'd like a copy of the new album.