“Lana is sort of ghost music. It’s gone through a lot of people’s minds and spaces in a way which I find very interesting, “ says Simon Fisher Turner of his new CD. “Ghost music” describes it perfectly, for this collaborative venture – principally with French sound artist Rainier Lericolais and Italian electronica duo T um’ – has been fashioned from a mass of material: processed, reshaped, sometimes worked on until just a trace of the original remains. Paradoxically, perhaps, Lana is also the most focused, most lyrical, and most beautiful music produced by this singular musician to date.

The project began in 2004 when Lericolais asked Fisher Turner to mix something for one of his own albums and was then asked to contribute to Lana. T um’, meanwhile, contacted him partly by accident, thinking he was a record company. “I started sending them CDs and they started sending me back CDs of stuff as the project grew. I just took the bits I liked, so I was sort of editor in chief.” He has still not actually met T um’.

Fisher Turner’s last album Swift (2002) was constructed like a mosaic, with improvisations by a team of musicians edited together with other sound sources – including his own “life recordings”. Lana reveals itself more gradually. Fisher Turner began by processing some recordings of pianos he had made a year previously for another project, recorded on Minidisc in Harrods Piano Department. The fact that he was there recording during normal store opening hours with people chatting and laughing in the background only added to the atmosphere.

Fisher Turner also sings on Lara, something he rarely does on record these days, although his voice is subjected to all sorts of electronic intervention. “Whether you can figure out what I’m saying or not, it doesn’t matter,” he says. But what I said is true to me. I just love making up songs on the spot. I love singing; it’s where I come from as an ex-choirboy, when I was eight years old.”

Like Swift, Lana, comes with a DVD, Lara, with visuals by Sebastian Sharples. To complete the set there is a sound toy, Lata, designed by Paul Farrington, which allows the listener to manipulate musical extracts from the album. “It is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen,” he enthuses Fisher Turner, “It is just wild. I adore it.”

As a complete entity, Lana Lara Lata is artistically dazzling, conceptually coherent and fun to play with. One can only wonder where he’ll go to next, but surely, recording a straightforward album of songs would seem a little ordinary after this? “I’d love to make an album of songs, but I really need a songwriting collaborator,” he counters. This might seem a little surprising but it shouldn't really. On a recent episode of the TV quiz show, Mastermind, one contestant's specialised topics was the music of Australian pop master-craftsmen, The Go-Betweens. One of the questions was, "Which artist who performed on 'Right Here' and 'Cut It Out' also recorded as The King of Luxembourg?” The answer? Why, Simon Fisher Turner, of course.