James Ellis Ford has announced his new album Lost In Another World, will arrive on August 14 via Domino Records. Today, the UK multi-artist has shared the lead-single off the LP “Overtones.” The album was made from start to finish in just over two weeks in early 2025, while James was in a hospital ward between punishing rounds of chemotherapy, following a diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia (AML), an aggressive cancer of the white blood cells. Lost In Another World shares the experiences from the frontline of illness; fear, love, reassurance, boredom, pain, calm, disbelief, and ultimately hope.

He hadn’t even fully absorbed the implications of the diagnosis – nine months of treatment with only a 30% survival rate – before a bed was found for him at Barts, London. During the second round of treatment, James (known for his production work with Arctic Monkeys, Blur, Depeche Mode, Help(2) for War Child and as both a solo artist and one half of Simian Mobile Disco) did the only thing that felt natural to him; he wrote, played, sang, recorded and mixed a solo album about the experience.

Using a laptop containing his virtual studio and a cheap mic, he created musical sketches. After Sereen, his wife, bought him a fold away IKEA bedside table and some synths to put on it, these sketches swiftly turned into songs. Staff at the hospital got used to taking his blood pressure while he was laying down vocal takes.

“There was no filter. I just sang the first thing that came into my head into the laptop.” It became a form of diary keeping; a way to process what was going on and also a way to cheer himself up, which would account for why some of the album is so surprisingly upbeat and poppy: “It was a pep talk; I was telling myself I was going to be OK. It was one way of dealing with the existential dread I felt. It gave me the ammunition to fight the experience and was a distraction from it.”

But no matter how cosmic or psychedelic the sounds are, the lyrics form a long silvery thread connecting him to a very earthbound and frightening experience: “Now I’m trusting in the process / But it really fucking hurts / And I’m not sure this poison / Isn’t just making it worse.” These songs share the rare unconscious vulnerability of Robert Wyatt or the carefree directness of Paul McCartney, and despite the temptation to do further work on Lost In Another World when he returned home, James essentially left it as it was: “The album is like a photograph. A time capsule.”

James Ellis Ford
Lost In Another World
Tracklisting
Domino Records

1. Overtones
2. People Just Don’t Know
3. ‘Til Our Days Are Gone
4. Here Today
5. Parallel Dimension
6. Silver Lining
7. I Believe In You
8. This Too Shall Pass
9. Homesick For Another World
10. The Ever After
11. Did You Ever Want To Go To Your Own Funeral?
12. This Will All Be A Memory Soon

James Ellis Ford 2026 Tour Dates

Aug 22, 2026 — Green Man Festival, Wales
Sept 17, 2026 — Horse Hospital, London

Pre-order Lost In Another World by James Ellis Ford HERE