James Ford has spoken to NME about the profound process of putting together his new album 'Lost In Another World' while in hospital undergoing cancer treatment and chemotherapy. Check out our interview below along with lead single 'Overtones'.
Fresh from helming the recent star-studded War Child 'Help(2)' charity compilation album, the former Simian Mobile Disco star and producer of the likes of Arctic Monkeys, Depeche Mode, Blur, Pulp and Fontaines DC will be releasing his second solo LP – and the first under his full name of James Ellis Ford – on August 14 via Domino.
Just like much of his work on 'Help(2)', 'Lost In Another World' was made while Ford was on a ward at Barts Hospital going through rounds of chemotherapy after his diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia (AML), an aggressive cancer of the white blood cells. The whole album was written and recorded in just over two weeks in early 2025.
The first taster comes with the psychedelic lead single 'Overtones'. “The otherworldliness of it all is summed up quite well in this tune,” Ford told NME. “It feels like it's leading you in to the world I found myself in.
“The whole album was done in quite a short period, smack bang in the middle of when I was having chemo. I was having to be isolated in a little room on my own, which was quite a lonely and discombobulating experience. It's quite hard to describe.”
Check out our full interview with Ford below, where he tells us about facing his mortality, the wonder of the NHS, and plans to play the album live.
NME: Hello James. Big question, but what can you tell us about the mental and physical state you were in during this process? How do you handle that and then manage to get creative?
James Ellis Ford: “You never think something this serious is going to happen to you, at least I didn't at this part of my life – I always felt pretty invincible. Then suddenly, it comes out of the blue and you're faced with the fact that you might die! It's quite an intense experience, as you might imagine. I had quite a lot of new things to process, new emotions.
“After each round of chemo you go through a period called neutropenia where you don't have an immune system. You have to be kept like a boy in the bubble away from any bugs. It was sort of like a prison sentence. You're in this strange room on your own, everything is white and it feels a bit like you're in that room at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey – an Uncanny Valley version of life as you used to know it.
“I've been very lucky that I get to make music every day and I have done my whole life since I was a teenager. This was probably the longest period when I hadn't been doing that. I was in bed and you can barely move, do anything or have any creative thoughts. This moment was the first time that a bit of energy came back. I just had an unshakable urge to do something and to connect myself back to a version of myself that I used to know.
“I got my wife to bring in a laptop and a microphone, I started sketching some ideas. All of a sudden I just got into this little tunnel and made the whole record in a couple of weeks.”
With those first sketches of songs, what were you instinctually making?
“When you're in that vulnerable position of being ill, you lose all physical barriers and all that sort of stuff because people are just coming in and jabbing stuff in you. In that way, I felt like all of my filters and all that stuff were just non-existent. I just sat down and wrote without trying to shroud any of it in any kind of poetry.
“I was just literally singing what was in my mind, almost in a journal, diary-writing way. Looking back now, it was almost too on-the-nose. It almost makes me wince a bit. I was quite happy that it's coming out, because it's quite a pure photograph of that period of my life, what I was thinking and what I was going through.
“A lot of the tunes are me trying to process the existential dread and also trying to cheer myself up with pep talks and telling myself that this is going to be OK. There are also some love letters to my little boy and my wife, and it's very personal in a way that kind of makes me feel uncomfortable now.”
Listening back now, what do these songs tell us about that journey?
“This first track is just about me trying to sum up this feeling of being detached from reality. It was weirdly a chemo-induced dream where I could hear this otherworldly music of the spheres and was getting an insight into something beyond this realm. I was just trying to sum up this slightly hollow feeling that waking up from that dream left me with.
“On the rest of the album, there are very specific things like a day I had out with my little boy and just realizing how important the little things are like trees, nature and those little moments. I was apologizing for not being there and not knowing how many of those moments we'd get in the future.”
Are there any songs in particular that profoundly speak to that?
“There's a song with a pretty heavy-sounding title that was meant to be more funny, but it's called 'Did You Ever Want To Go To Your Own Funeral?' I was fairly public about being ill and was inundated in a really positive way with lots of messages of love and support from family and friends, as well as the wider community and people I'd lost touch with.
“It was a very beautifully positive thing, and it was wonderful to feel that love coming from people. It reminded me of when you go to a funeral and someone says, 'He would have loved this, it's a shame he's not here'. I could peer through a crack in the door and witness that happening for myself in the strangest way.
“It was a wonderful feeling, and not one that you'd get in any other circumstance. This whole past year has been some of the worst moments of my life, but also some moments of transcendental beauty and gratitude for the blessings I have in my life as well. It's a very weird thing to process.”
How has all this changed the way you want to live your life and want to see the world?
“It's massively changed the way I feel about life. I feel more alive and viscerally connected to being alive and what that means than I ever have. There are definitely moments when you coast through life and you aren't really tuned in to what's important, and I feel like this whole experience has focused me back on to the important things. As you get further away from that moment, you start to see some of that slipping away and you get a little wound up in day-to-day shit or worrying about this thing or the other, but the clarity it gave me is something I'm trying to hold on to and to the way it made me feel.
“A lot of them are quite simple lessons about gratitude for the simple things in life. They sound like Instagram-y statements, but when you go through it it's a profound really lesson. It's akin to the feeling you get after a heavy psychedelic trip or something like that. You can see through the mush to what's important.”
Obviously this is very personal to you, but is there something in here that people going through something similar can take from?
“I definitely had a few people who were going through or had recently been through some similar things who kind of mentored me through it a little bit. I'm very grateful for those people. It's a huge rollercoaster from moment to moment of results and waiting for what could happen while dealing with all those myriad options and not freaking out or mentally descending into the abyss!
“Seeing that other people had been through it or gone through it was hugely helpful for me. If anyone sees me going through it and an take something positive from it, then that's a win.”
Did you share how nurses were regularly coming and going to take blood samples and check on you as you were putting down takes?
“I don't think many people have tried to record an album from the hospital before, so they were quite bemused and amused by it. Quite often they'd see me singing with my headphones on and they'd creep in and try and take my blood pressure while trying not to disturb me.
“I have to say with all the talk about immigration and the NHS, the NHS was absolutely fucking amazing, and probably about 80 percent of the people who looked after me were immigrants and the best of us. They were absolutely wonderful, caring people who saved my life on a daily basis so it's important to remember that.”
Are there any collaborations on the album with doctors and nurses?
“There are probably a few people in there that could have done some backing vocals, but I didn't manage to broach that subject really! To be honest, I was just making it for myself to just cheer myself up. I wasn't necessarily even going to put it out, but it just developed and came together more completely and quicker than I expected. I was just sketching. I wasn't really thinking about collaborations, but they all featured in a way. All of the people who looked after me were part of it. There were a lot of weird bleeping machines and stuff.”
“They creep onto the record and I did consider using them, because they are quite interesting sounds. You'll have a few machines making the same noise but they'll all be out of sync and make this kind of quite interesting, almost electronic tapestry. But by the end, those sounds become so nightmarish and annoying that I ended up having to delete them all from the record because they just took me to a bad place.”
What can you tell us about plans to play this album live?
“I'm a stage where I'm not fully out of it, healthwise. There's still a chance it could relapse. That being said, my treatment is over for the time being. I'm absolutely trying to move on with my life. Talking about this record and actually listening to it and trying to get it together [to play] live actually takes me back to one of the darker periods of my life.
“It is a little re-traumatising, if I'm honest! It's not something that I am hugely enjoying. I am getting together a live show to do a few things, but I am going to have to see how it goes, quite honestly. It might be really unpleasant for me, or I might quite enjoy it.”
Is there anything else you've been working on that you're able to tell us about? any records in the can with any legends we can expect soon?
“I would love to tell you. There's definitely some really exciting stuff coming down the pipes, but I've got in so much trouble in the past for pre-empting stuff that comes out. I remember I said something quite in passing about the Blur record [‘The Ballad Of Darren’] when I was working on that, then someone took something off the record and it blew up into this thing. I'm a few times bitten and shy for talking about things before they've been announced, but there are definitely some exciting new things on the cards.”
'Lost In Another World' arrives on Friday August 14 via Domino and is available for pre-order here. He'll also be performing at Green Man Festival in Wales on Saturday August 22 and a headline show at the Horse Hospital in London on Thursday September 17. Visit here for tickets and more information.
