Best known for producing records for blockbuster British artists Arctic Monkeys, Florence + The Machine, Blur, Pulp and Jessie Ware, James Ford has stepped out from behind the console for a solo album made under extreme circumstances.
"I'd been ill since Christmas [2024] and under the weather so much that I could barely think or do anything," Ford tells Double J's Tom Ravenscroft.
By the following April, he was admitted to hospital and undergoing chemotherapy for acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), an aggressive form of cancer with an average survival rate of 30 per cent.
Recovering between rounds of chemotherapy, waiting as his "immune system comes back online", Ford's energy slowly returned.
"I needed something to take me out of my situation … to cheer myself up and reconnect back with the version that I recognise," he says.
"Because I make music every day and it makes me feel good. I just wanted to bring that back into my life.
Using a spartan set-up brought in by his wife, Ford wrote and recorded music from his hospital bed, "imprisoned" in order to protect his immune system during treatment.
The result? Lost In Another World, an album made in two weeks and released under the 57-year-old's full name, James Ellis Ford.
Music on the ward
Hospital staff were "bemused" that a patient battling cancer was intently beavering away on music between punishing chemotherapy.
"I don't think [the nurses] have ever really seen anyone try to make music in that situation before. But they were very interested and supportive," Ford says.
Ford would also send "little sketches" out to his father and friends, including Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner and singer-songwriter Bill Ryder-Jones, for feedback.
"It was almost like me waving a flag. It was a nice thing to talk about that wasn't doom and gloom, you know?" he says.
Lost In Another World is coloured by some dark atmospherics and lyrics that are "uncomfortable for me to listen back", Ford says. But they are the exception.
The majority of its 12 tracks are brighter, built upon playful analogue synths, programmed beats and experimental pop with the warm atmosphere of Brian Eno's solo ambience — tying it to Ford's 2023 solo debut The Hum.
"I was trying to make dance music … [to] lift my mood and focus on the positive things in my life," Ford says.
Against the bubbling synths and metallic groove of The Ever After, Ford thinks of his eight-year-old son, Frank.
"It's in the joy you bring," he sings.
"Illuminate everything, even in my darkest hour."
The meditative Overtones embraces a cosmic philosophy and the tuned percussion presets of a Suiko, a rare synthesiser that reproduces traditional Japanese instruments.
Getting into 'The Tunnel'
Like most musicians, Ford reasons, "I have the ability to get into what I call 'The Tunnel'. You're focusing on something and heading towards it and the rest of the world sort of dissolves."
"It's a wonderful feeling. It's something I search for every day," he says.
That single-minded drive and optimism tint the album, and helped Ford persevere through an ordeal most would struggle to contemplate, let alone endure.
"That was the main thing I was looking for, basically. To get in the tunnel and make everything disappear," he says.
For a sought-after producer whose prestige has allowed almost unfettered access — keys to studios, quality equipment, crack musicians and orchestras — Ford says it was "liberating" to work within restrictions.
"I am always a great proponent of limitations. As a producer, you're often just trying to impose a set of rules on someone: 'Let's do this with an acoustic guitar, or drum machines.'
"It makes you just focus on the melody and the lyrics and different things."
Once out of hospital, Ford revisited his material but soon feared that tinkering with it would sully the purity of what he'd captured.
"I got someone else to mix it because I like the idea of it being a real snapshot of that moment in time," he says.
Lost In Another World lives up to its title, drawing the listener into a deeply personal, intimate sonic universe crafted under surreal conditions.
"That's kind of the best compliment, honestly. When I left it alone, that's what I was hoping it would achieve. Because that's what it was: there's no filter.
"Part of the feeling I was trying to encapsulate on the record was just how detached and lonely you feel. You've been catapulted into an alternate reality, and it was a very weird thing to go through."
A little help from his friends
Earlier this year, Ford oversaw the release of HELP(2), a charity album compiled with War Child and one of the year's best releases so far.
The all-star release saw Ford "calling in some favours", securing big-name clients (Depeche Mode, Pulp, Fontaines D.C. and Foals) and buzz-worthy younger acts (Wet Leg, Cameron Winter, Beabadoobee, Black Country and New Road).
In July last year, having undergone chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant, Ford was "feeling good".
"We set the whole thing up and I reached out to everyone I could," he says.
However, the week before a "big session" at London's famed Abbey Road studios, Ford says he "got a mouth ulcer, had my blood checked and I didn't have an immune system again."
While Damon Albarn and Arctic Monkeys were in the studio, Ford was "in the ICU with a tube sticking out of my neck and nearly died".
He ended up right back in recovery at the same St Bartholomew's Hospital ward, "where I made my record with the same f***ing laptop".
"I mixed the Arctic Monkeys tune [Opening Night] in there. Then, I was doing remote sessions over video meetings with Last Dinner Party and Olivia Rodrigo," Ford says.
"All of that while having a blood transfusion. And I was just like, what is my life!?"
Inspired by the cadre of A-list talent rallying together for the great good of completing Help (2), Ford dove into the tunnel once again with a death-defying sense of purpose.
"Everyone pulled together and made something that we're all really proud of."
The entire "mad rollercoaster of ups and downs" has given the super-producer a renewed lease on life.
"It's so hard to actually internalise the things you read about on the internet all the time about gratitude and being present, living in the moment," Ford says.
"You never expect it's going to happen to you … But when you go through something like this, you learn it for real: how valuable those things are and it really refocuses you, gives you a clarity on what's important in life in a way that I'm very grateful for."
Doing press around his new album and rehearsing with a band of "good friends" to bring it to the stage has not been "the most comfortable experience, quite honestly," he adds.
However, "on both counts", each time he revisits the trauma, "it recedes a little bit more in a way. It starts to become more of a story about someone else."
"Maybe it will actually be a good way of putting it to bed," Ford says.
