Bright Failing Star is probably one of the most straightforward albums I've made, and under some of the most trying circumstances I've encountered in recent years. The south London flat we were in at the time had suffered flood damage during the summer before we moved in, and our room had it's sodden carpet ripped out and the bare concrete floor exposed. This was never fixed in the duration we lived there so by December it was bloody freezing. To compound this we had no hot water for 5 months, coping by boiling pots on the stove for showers and cleaning. Why did we stay there? It was cheap and we were saving money to travel. We can laugh about it now, just.

Somehow in the midst of this almost third world style living arrangement, a hectic day job, and planning for our forthcoming travels and return to NZ, I managed to find enough creative head space to record an album, albeit as part of the process of rehearsing and preparing for a show in Paris supporting Stars Of The Lid. It was done with the utmost economy and efficiency, live to disc, no frills or overdubs, plugged directly into a laptop with headphones for monitors, with the post-production addition of a field recording on a Philadelphia-bound Amtrak train and a short piano segment taped in Oslo that happened to fit as a kind of coda. It's still surprising to me how spacious and panoramic it sounds. And not at all bleak as it could have been. It's like I was dreaming of the open spaces I'd rather have been in at that time and transmitting those thoughts via electronic signals to the computer.

The title Bright Failing Star is a direct cop from a David Bowie lyric ('Subterraneans'), and I love the opposing positive/negative idea in the phrase, which mirrors the glittering decay of the music within. - Peter Wright, September 2009