It has been said that you’ve recorded over 100 albums prior to I DES. Do you ever struggle to stay motivated enough to continue innovating new, experimental music, or do you find you have access to a constant source of creative motivation? Up until about 2015, to combat writer’s block, I would look through old notebooks of half-finished ideas and rejects, and work on them a bit more. In 2016 I discovered the last pile of A4 pages in the bottom of a drawer; odd lines and short paragraphs of utter rubbish which, when cut up and stuck back down again in a different order, still read like rubbish. I persevered and gleaned enough lines to sing over a load of drones and loops. Another creative full stop averted.

Since August 2020, I’ve been buying up modular synths, cutting up quarter-inch tape, recording loops and modular patches, and have recently started reading back through the daily outpourings of angst I wrote during the first half of 2021. This past five years I’ve been swapping (and adding to) cassette tapes with Keny Drew (East Neuk stained-glass artist), and for a year improvising alongside Mat Fowler of Jam Money, both of whom keep me on my toes.

I DES is a reference to the album’s co-creator, Des Lawson. How important was his input on the album, and what do you think it would have sounded like without him? Simple: we’d have to wait a lot longer for the next, shonky King Creosote record, I KEN. Des unearthed ‘Walter De La Nightmare’ from a session recorded on Mull in 2018, changed all the chords, and we were off. Albeit two songs at a time.

My usual budget for a studio album averages 14 days, mostly long days, so 140 hours max from the first recorded drum click to playing the finished album on the car journey home. Des spent 140 hours mixing the closing track ‘Please Come Back’, and I disliked it so much that I axed entire sections and asked him to start again. Conservatively, Des has put in ten times as many hours as the budget allowed to complete this record.

Having spent a quarter of a century navigating the Scottish music industry, in what ways would you say it has changed since you started releasing music, and are you hopeful for its future direction? Sorry, I’ve not being paying any attention to what’s been going on since, um, 2012? Des Lawson keeps me up to speed with the bands he records, and I hear all the indie label goings-on from Lomond Campbell and Dan Willson [Withered Hand] from time to time. I’d say it’s the highly skilled trad folk lot who seem to be busiest.

I hear from Mat Fowler that there are lots of smaller festivals and events popping up all over the country that are a mixture of different art forms, run by folks who’ve turned their backs on promoting themselves and their records. Bread And Butter, a local café here in Anstruther, puts on a live music night once a month, early doors for punters to order off the food menu; and along near St Monans there are regular gigs at the Futtle organic brewery. I doubt either count as music industry.

During one of the many lockdowns, an old woman in Crail asked if I was busy. ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘Everyone needs music!’ Very humbling. In short, I think the direction of Scottish music ought to be inwards: smaller gigs, more of them, and much closer to home for all ages. Remember, the punks are in their mid to late 60s now.

Some people would say that including a 36-minute drone on an album is something of a risk, though clearly, you are not ‘some people’. At what stage did you shake the feelings of anxiety that can come with taking such creative risks, or were those feelings never present in the first place? For fans of Tony Conrad’s Slapping Pythagoras, our ‘Drone in B#’ might sound too much like a pop single, but you’re right: for fans of the pop single, our drone might be more annoying than the sound of their neighbour’s lawnmower. I don’t give it much thought anymore, for I can’t even please everybody that plays on my records, let alone everybody else!

I DES, more than any previous record, was worked on as the last KC record in the belief that things would never quite get back to normal. I’m 55: other than a dunt in star ratings, what is there to lose? Lucky to be putting out a record at all.

The following lyric on ‘Blue Marbled Elm Trees’ has quite a morbid feel to it: ‘I had the best time laughing with my girls / I had the best life offered up / By this blue marble or any alien world.’ Is this feeling a recurring theme throughout the album? Would you believe that chorus line is meant to be the uplifting moment to counter all the morbid stuff of the verses? Tracks two, three and four (‘Blue Marbled Elm Trees’, ‘Burial Bleak’, ‘Dust’) are dubbed ‘The Death Set’, but whilst I was typing up the lyric sheet for the CD booklet, it dawned on me that other songs aren’t exactly full of joy either. I invite anyone to send me a record of their own thoughts as they approach the Big 5-0.

And, finally, what do you think King Creosote fans will come away with after listening to I DES? That there may well be life after 50.

King Creosote is on tour Friday 3–Friday 10 November; I DES is released by Domino on Friday 3 November.