If a piece of work is derivative, we know where it came from, we can spot the influences. But often, when someone comes up with something outlandish, instead of concentrating on the fact that, say, seventy percent of it is new and original, we tend to concentrate on the thirty percent of the structure that we do understand from the past. There is almost a resistance to experiencing new things in a vulnerable and fresh way. (Certainly musically I think we are hooked on familiarity). No piece of work is totally original. I use the same twelve notes as everybody else, I use a lot of vocal ornaments from various traditions, and so people have hung onto that, in a way, because the rest of it is rather a bumpy ride. With this album, that hanging on is not so possible.

There are some things that relate back to the previous albums. With "The Zen Kiss" I talked about "being sung" – this album focuses on the experience of the listener being between my ears or hearing what I hear, which is a way of getting closer to the experience of "being sung". The album is incomplete whilst it lacks the attentive listener’s experience, and that makes it much more like performance art. Although the album uses the same structure and the same techniques as "The Zen Kiss" and "Weaving My Ancestors’ Voices", this time it puts you in the place of the creator.

I have a single skill, from which many others have grown, and that skill is to be able to connect to a world of potential, swim alongside it, learn from it, and birth its ideas into this world. There is something going on under great creative works that we all need to face — not the blank page, but the darkness of potential, where you can hear little whispers of ideas or gifts of insight that the creator births into the real world. I want the listener to be able to hear those whispers of things for themselves, and that is why "ABoneCroneDrone" attempts to place the listener inside the creator’s cauldron.

I’ve become so attuned to what’s going on within drones that now I sometimes hear fully formed melodies in them, played on appropriate instruments, and these "performances" don’t usually relate to my current level of skill as a writer or singer — they are often far beyond my skills — nor do they sound like any composition I can recall, but they carry the same joy that I experience from any brilliant performance. It’s rather like "seeing things".

Sometimes I could swear that what I’m experiencing exists in reality for anyone else to hear.