ONE of Britain’s best-loved alternative singer songwriters returns to the Ribble Valley to headline the Cloudspotting Music and Arts festival at Gisburn Forest at the weekend.

King Creosote, aka Kenny Anderson, brings his seven-piece band to provide a stirring finale to Cloudspotting’s atmospheric three-day sojourn in the forest.

Hailing from the tiny Scottish fishing village of Crail on the East Neuk of Fife, the son of an expert accordion player and one of three adeptly musical brothers, Anderson, now in his late 40s, is finally enjoying the critical acclaim – and a degree of commercial comfort – that two decades of highly consistent recording output richly deserves.

Much of that material was self-released on Kenny’s own record label Fence, which drew legions of followers in to appreciate the wider pastures of a Fife music scene that gave us KT Tunstall, James Yorkston and The Beta Band.

Creatively liberated from the onerous task of running his own label – Fence folded in 2013 – Anderson followed his Mercury Award-nominated LP with John Hopkins, Diamond Mine, with his first film soundtrack, entitled From Scotland With Love in 2014.

This project was commissioned to coincide with Scotland hosting The Commonwealth Games and only last summer, King Creosote headlined the Edinburgh International Arts Festival with an eight-piece band.

“My nerves are still a little bit frayed from the live renditions so I’ll probably never be able to just see the film for what it is,” he said. “I like the album however, so I’m delighted with the songs, and I know from the reaction of our audiences that they fit into the film footage really well.”

It is something of a coup for the intimate Cloudspotting Festival to land King Creosote’s seven-piece show, especially considering they are performing at the world music festival WOMAD in Wiltshire on Saturday.

The concert will showcase material from King Creosote’s next album, the curiously titled Astronaut Meets Appleman, which is out in September.

The album explores the tension and harmony between tradition and technology – and also invokes a feeling, Anderson says, of “being caught between heaven and earth”.

“I wanted to push myself songwriting-wise, so I went in with hardly anything and had to wing it,” he said.

“I wanted to try and flip the clock all the way back to sound like a younger me – or a less cynical me. In the past, I’ve been fixated on twisting and wrenching every line, but here I’ve let that go a bit, and I hope that lets you concentrate more on the music; on what’s going on around it.”

n King Creosote headlines at Cloudspotting Music and Arts Festival, Gisburn Forest on Sunday. Full weekend and day tickets available from The Grand Box Office 01200 421599. Cloudspotting open tomorrow.