Squarepusher
Using the same equipment from the sessions that produced the majority of "Feed Me Weird Things" Tom now set about working on the material for his first album for Warp. His broad conception for this record was "to push away from the jazz influence that was being felt at the time to a more soundtrack-type of sound". According to Tom he was listening to, amongst other things, early Lalo Schifrin and the "Deathwish" soundtrack by Herbie Hancock around this time. That said, the album also contains some abrupt diversions into quite different musical territory, evidenced in what Tom calls the "Industrial Psychedelia" of "Chin Hippy" and "Rustic Raver".
The Awakening (James Morrison album)
"The Awakening" is the first album by Morrison to be released with Island Records after he recently parted ways with Polydor, his label of six years. Three years in the making, the album is influenced by the death of his father, as well as Morrison’s own steps into parenthood. It also sees him form a new creative relationship with producer Bernard Butler, who has further advanced Morrison's foray into a classic but contemporary soul sound.
"I don’t want to put across that, yeah, the album is about my dad, losing my dad; some of it is but the other half is this sense of being woken up to what I wanted to achieve," he said in the interview by "Music Week". Meanwhile, speaking of the title itself, he told Blues & Soul: "I basically just wanted it to feel like a first album, in the sense of me having woken up as an artist and person – you know, I wanted to forget that Broken Strings kind of pop side of me a little bit. And so, with me having actually written a SONG called 'The Awakening', that title also just kind of neatly fitted the album TOO."