It has been a while since the last No-Man album. Did you enjoy working on it with your fellow musicians?

The process wasn't necessarily the most enjoyable, but I feel the result has been well worth the effort involved in making the album happen.

It was also really good to make new creative musical connections with people such as American Music Club's Bruce Kaphan and Dave Stewart.

What is your feeling about the completed album? Do you like it and would you say it is some of yours and Steven Wilson's best work to date?

I think it captures the essence of the band, while taking us somewhere new.

My feeling is that it's perhaps the strongest collection of songs we've ever released and Steven agrees.

Albums often define themselves emotionally and conceptually with the artist being the observer and subsequently shaping the results. Schoolyard Ghosts seemed to have a very positive artistic momentum from the very first session.

I think every No-Man album is both a continuation as well as something new and Schoolyard Ghosts is no exception to this.

The spirit of the music is similar to our previous album, Together We're Stranger, but musically the new album's experiments with composition and rhythm are almost the opposite of Together We're Stranger's reliance on atmosphere and drift.

It's a combination of myself and Steven not wanting to repeat old approaches and the fact that there's been a five year gap between the last two albums.

Who wrote the lyrics and the music? Was it a shared work between Steven and yourself?

I always write the lyrics and the vocal melodies.

The music can be written by myself or Steven solo, or by both of us together, but it's always subject to a No-Man re-interpretation and re-evaluation.

On previous albums, the balance has been that I would submit a couple of demos, Steven would submit four or five and that we'd write a couple of pieces together in the studio.

On Schoolyard Ghosts, almost all of the starting points came from demos I submitted, with the material being enhanced and extended by Steven. Subsequently, we subjected all of the songs to the No-Man process.

One of the pieces, "Wherever There Is Light", was written in the studio together during the album sessions.

"Truenorth", perhaps my favorite No-Man song ever, started off with a piano, arpeggio guitar and voice demo that I'd submitted. Steven then extended this by writing the music for two additional sections that seamlessly evolved from the original idea. One thing I particularly like about it is that at 13 minutes, it doesn't ever seem too long.

I recently received a bootleg with material on it by No-Man that goes back as far as 1989. When did No-Man actually start and did you and Steven have another name for it at first? How and when did you guys actually meet and when did you start to make music? What was involved in this process?

I started writing with Steven in 1987 and we hit it off straight away. We wrote two very diverse songs within the first two hours of meeting one another.

The relationship had great chemistry from the start and I believe that Steven still brings something out in what I do that no-one else does and vice versa.

One of the best things about Schoolyard Ghosts was that 21 years after our first studio session, we felt that we could still write songs that we believed were different from what we'd done before and amongst our best.

The name No-Man was chosen in 1990 to coincide with our single, "Colours".

We've always had eclectic musical tastes and still retain a passion for what we do.

Do you or Steven actually write music via computer or the old style of putting it on paper? If not, do you just play the melody and do the vocals on a cdr for other participating musicians to improvise by?

We use any method that we feel works for the song.

We use computer studios and sometimes manipulate pieces at the post-production stage and sometimes improvise direct onto hard disc, but usually we play real instruments in real time at some point after the compositional process.

With guest musicians, we sometimes bring them into the band's studio to play over the songs and sometimes, such as with the American Players on the new album, Pat Mastelotto and Bruce Kaphan, we just send computer files to the musicians.

Who are some of the other musicians that you work with in the band?

Theo Travis has worked with the band for around a decade and people like Gavin Harrison and Peter Chilvers have been known to us for even longer.

Was the process of recording the CD fairly "seamless" or were there certain songs that were more difficult?

Only one song didn't work for us immediately and that was "Streaming".

We liked the piece, but felt that something was missing. Nothing we did with the song worked until Bruce Kaphan added a stunning distorted e-bow pedal steel solo line that suddenly made it an album definite for both of us.

"Mixtaped" became something very different from its starting point, but it wasn't ever a painful process and it wasn't ever a song we'd considered dropping from the album.

The rest of the material seemed to come together pretty effortlessly.

Does Steven do most or all of the final mixing and such? Do you have skills in that area?

I always leave the mixing and the mastering to Steven.

He's superbly talented in that field and continues to improve.

When does your tour start and are you looking forward to it? No-Man fans are going to miss you touring America, but you explained to me earlier why you guys were unable to come to America. Could you explain this again? I think the fan base is growing in the United States and Canada. These two countries will look forward to seeing you guys in the future.

Due to a combination of Porcupine Tree's touring commitments and difficulties in the band obtaining US visas, it's very unlikely that we'll make it to America.

I lived in New York for a while and have played in Canada, so it's a shame, because I like both countries a lot. The enthusiasm from our North (and South) American audience has always been tremendously encouraging and, as you say, it certainly seems to be growing.

What's next down the road after the tour or have you given that any thought? Will there be another solo album, Tim? Most people, myself included, surely considered "My Hotel Year" a success. It would be grand to have another solo album.

For me, I'll be working some more on albums with Italian musician Giancarlo Erra (of the band Nosound), Peter Chilvers and Henry Fool.

I'm also involved in co-writing and producing some music for ex-Fairport Convention singer, Judy Dyble.

There are no immediate plans for a follow-up to My Hotel Year.