During my time with HERCULES I had an overflow of tunes hanging around in my book - they weren't quite right for the HERCULES sound and seemed destined to remain on the drunken 4am front room set-list…rarely performed well and only ever to a select audience of gorgeous inebriates. Special, but I always felt some deserved more of an outing.

Needing to get away and ‘breathe the life of strangers' as my song goes, I bought a mandolin and spent six months roaming South America, writing more tunes, overdosing on Inca ruins, getting ripped off, meeting many wonderful people and letting Brazilian street kids thrash my mandolin.

Autumn 2004, I returned to the smoke and inspired by Brazilian drumming groups, Pagode bands, The Amazon, the list is endless, I simply brought together sounds that I like: mandolin, bouzouki, acoustic guitar, jazz double bass and Latin percussion. I quickly found some musicians and The Easy Tigers were born.

Over a weekend in February, somewhere in South London, London jazz double bassist Chris Rodel, Columbian percussionist Victor ‘Cabas’ Trivino, Virginia (US) session multi-instrumentalist Lyle Zimmerman (bouzouki/ dobro), Nick Wright (guitar) and myself (mandolin-the same thrashed one) met and played live. So, with maximum fun and minimal tweaking, the debut album of The Easy Tigers ‘Breathe the Life of Strangers’ was recorded.

With reluctance, I have tried to categorize the sound but it's difficult. Others have said:

‘A she-feline Ben Harper taking r&b, country and reggae on a walk through La Selva’

‘Playfully emotive hooky/rootsy texasbarndance-meets-Squeeze tunes’

‘Nora Jones on a dirty weekend’

Why not have a listen and decide for yourself…