WHEN Badly Drawn Boy, aka Bolton-born Damon Gough, announced his new single and a trilogy of albums, the question on everyone’s lips was, inevitably, “What took so long?”

The Mercury-winning singer-songwriter last year released Is There Nothing We Could Do, inspired by the film The Fattest Man In Britain, but prior to that his last studio album had been in 2006.

Gough is candid about his break, explaining that once he stopped writing he simply couldn’t get started again — and that when he did he found the recording experience terrifying.

“At first it was domestic things,” he said. “We had a new kitchen put in which disrupted my writing — the house was upended — then I got tainted by the whole record industry thing.

“The film soundtrack came as a saviour. I went into the studio to record some demos and I was shaking when I sat down at the microphone because I hadn’t done it in two years.

"That’s another thing about doing the trilogy — I don’t want that to happen again.”

He also now writes every day, when possible, in order to stay in the habit of being creative, and records all his ideas — no matter how terrible he might think they are.

“I think it’s important to record ideas, even if you don’t think they’re very good, because the next day you can go back and listen and think, ‘there’s something there’,” he says.

“Your songwriting is something you have to keep exercising, like a muscle.”

Titled as a whole It’s What I’m Thinking, the first part of that trilogy of albums, which will be released on Monday, October 4, is subtitled Photographing Snowflakes.

Damon has been much more “hands on” with its production than he used to be, and says it may well be his best work to date.

“I think I’ve become a better, stronger songwriter,” he says.

“I understand people liking the first album (The 2000 Mercury Music Prize winner The Hour Of Bewilderbeast) — there’s a certain charm and naivety — but I honestly believe that every album I’ve made since has been as good, if not better.

“Now my writing’s better, more grown-up. I don’t really know how I made the first album — I had no idea what I was doing.

"I am kind of trying to get back to that — Picasso did it, he was trying to paint like a child.”

Now on his own label, he says he finds the pressure bands are under to shift millions of albums ridiculous, and says it is one of the ways the industry is stifling musicians’ creativity.

“Coldplay, who are good friends of mine, they’ve got into the position where if they only sold two million albums that would be a disaster — that’s crazy,” he says.

“The first single I did we pressed a few and took them to Piccadilly Records in Manchester, and by the end of the week they were ringing up asking for more — I couldn’t believe it.

“You need to remind yourself of the feeling you got when 10 records you made yourself were sold.”

l Badly Drawn Boy plays the Royal Northern College of Music on Thursday, October 21.