James Ellis Ford Made an Album on a Hospital Ward

Hospital staff became used to taking James Ellis Ford’s blood pressure while he recorded vocal takes. His working surface on a ward at Barts Hospital in London was a folding IKEA bedside table brought in by his wife, Sereen. It held several synthesisers beside a laptop and a cheap microphone.

Ford assembled that setup during his second round of chemotherapy in early 2025. In just over two weeks, he wrote, played, sang, recorded and mixed all twelve tracks on Lost In Another World. Domino released the finished album on 14 August 2026.

The speed reached the words as well as the equipment. Ford said he sang the first thing that entered his head, turning the songs into a diary and a pep talk. He linked that self-encouragement to the record’s unexpectedly upbeat pop moments. Overtones opens the album by letting the music arrive before its circumstances need explaining.

That matters because laptop production was possible for Ford but not his preferred way of working. In 2023, MusicRadar found a 1960s desk, tape machines, modular synthesisers and drums in his attic studio. Ford acknowledged that brilliant records could be made on a laptop, then described his own need for physical contact with instruments and his effort to use Pro Tools with as little editing as possible.

Back home, he could have replaced the cheap microphone and run the parts through the hardware he knew best. He resisted that correction. “The album is like a photograph. A time capsule,” Ford said. Its defining production choice was therefore made after the hospital sessions: he kept the sound of those limits instead of disguising them.