Often referred to as the “Godmother of Freak Folk,” singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyan has never been the most prolific of artists. Discovered by Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham in 1965, her debut single was an early Jagger-Richards composition called “Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind” with a young Jimmy Page on guitar. She made another single, “Train Song,” an appearance in Peter Whitehead’s classic cult film Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London, but not much really happened until she met producer Joe Boyd (Pink Floyd, Nick Drake) who wanted to record her folk songs for his Witchseason Productions.

Her first album, Just Another Diamond Day,  produced by Boyd and recorded with Robert Kirby (who did the string arrangements for Nick Drake’s records) and members of Fairport Convention and The Incredible String Band came out in 1970, but sales were discouraging and Bunyan left the music industry to raise her children. Unbeknownst to Bunyan herself, the record became an object of fierce cult adoration, selling for big bucks on eBay and inspiring the likes of Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom. Just Another Diamond Day was reissued in 2000 and the title track was used in a memorable T-Mobile advertisement. It only took 35 years for her follow-up album, Lookaftering to appear to near unanimous praise. Good things come to those who wait. And wait. And wait…

She’s back with a new album, Heartleap, but this one’s only been brewing since 2008. It’s a delicate, intimate, gorgeous album—timeless really—and unlike anything else currently on offer. Interestingly, it’s practically a hand-crafted affair, with Bunyan writing, arranging, performing, recording and doing most of the post production herself on Pro Tools.

I asked Vashti Bunyan a few questions over email:

Adam Peters is one of my best friends, and when he came home after the Syd Barrett tribute concert in London in 2007, even after working with all those legends YOU were the one that he couldn’t stop raving about. I see in the liner notes that some of the album was recorded in his home studio in Topanga Canyon.

Vashti Bunyan: It was so great meeting Adam and Korinna at the Syd Barrett show. I remember the whole show so fondly. When they offered me their studio and small Topanga apartment in the summer of 2008 I jumped at the chance. Both my sons and a grandson live in Los Angeles and so I had other good reasons to be there.

Some smaller parts of the recording were made in other studios – the strings , recorders and saxophone in London, Andy Cabic’s guitar and voice in Los Angeles, Jo Mango’s flute and kalimba in Glasgow, and Devendra Banhart’s voice in New York. I recorded Gareth Dickson’s improvised guitar here in Edinburgh – along with all my guitar parts and all vocals not already recorded in Topanga.

Did “place” have anything to do with these compositions? Topanga Canyon and Edinburgh are such radically different geographies.

Vashti Bunyan: Adam’s studio in Topanga was where I worked the hardest and recorded a lot of the vocals on the album.. just those two months working most days. My partner Al and I lived above the studio – and I knew Al was aching to get to the beach every day and so I got up early and worked hard – with the thought that if I didn’t he would go without me!

Here at home in Edinburgh there are different distractions and endless ways not to get down to it. Such a huge difference geographically, yes. I miss the sun and blue of California. Here amongst the beautiful Georgian houses and chimney-pot skylines I gaze out of the window and try to remember being warm. But the skies here can be quite spectacular – and I do love the dramatic difference between the seasons. The autumns here have brought the most songs.
 

 
How well-versed were you in Pro Tools and computer audio programs before you made Heartleap?

Vashti Bunyan: I started with Cubase in 2001, moving on to Pro Tools, then I preferred Logic for recording and back to Pro Tools for editing. I mostly taught myself as I had been refused admission to a technical music course at my local college on the grounds that I was too old and it would be wasted on me. What better incentive could there have been to prove I could do it.

What did you gain from using Pro Tools that you couldn’t have done otherwise?

Vashti Bunyan: I can’t read or write music - nor play any instrument other than the guitar. It has been so good for me to be able to write arrangements for other instruments and get the orchestrations that whirl around my head into an approximated version in the real world.

The vocals are wonderfully intimate and confident. I’ve read that you were alone when they were recorded, acting as your own engineer.

Vashti Bunyan: I experimented with recording a vocal when I knew there was someone in the house who might overhear me – and then the same vocal when I knew the house was empty. There was a big difference in expression and sure-footedness and so I made sure I was always alone from then on when recording vocals..
 

 
Why are you adamant that this will be your final album?

Vashti Bunyan: It is seven years since I first started writing the songs for Heartleap and the last year before finishing was really intense as I decided I really had to meet FatCat’s deadline of the end of June this year. (They had given me a deadline in 2008 but they pretty much knew I would sail through that..).

When the mixing and mastering were finished in early June (in the London studio of Mandy Parnell and Martin Korth) everyone started talking about the ‘next’ one.. and I said “noooo I’m not doing this again!!” – and that found its way into the press release…  and so I am asked a lot if it really is my last album.

Also - I think the album format may be long behind us if I were ever to come up with ten more songs at the rate I work. However if I do write more songs I might just put them at one at a time – digitally.

Mostly though I need to keep a promise that I made to my children – that when this next album was finished I would get down to writing the story of my early musical days. That might take me a while.

Below, Vashti Bunyan and guitarist Gareth Dickson playing “Across the Water” in her Edinburgh home studio. (Via The Skinny, who promise more from this session)

 
A young Vashti sings “Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind”