AFTER 20 years in Everything But The Girl, and ten years as a DJ and record label boss of Buzzin' Fly, Ben Watt decided last year to "park everything" to complete two long-planned solo projects.

The first was his second book, Romany and Tom, a portrait of his parents published by Boomsbury. The second is Hendra, his first solo album since North Marine Drive 31 years ago, released this week on his own new imprint, Unmade Road, through Caroline International.

In the words of the former University of Hull student, it is "simply a folk-rock record in an electronic age", recorded in London and Berlin with two key collaborators, former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler and producer Ewan Pearson, and a stellar cameo from Pink Floyd's David Gilmour on slide guitar and backing vocals on The Levels.

"Sometimes I laugh and think it could be the definition of the difficult second album; it has certainly been a long time coming," says Ben, reflecting on the 31-year hiatus between solo albums.

"Some might see it as a strange fork in the road after Buzzin' Fly, but everything for me has always been about finding a truthful and vivid point of connection with an audience, whether on dancefloors or in folk clubs. Words, beats and notes; it's all we have. It's just a question of playing them in what feels like the right order at the right time, and at the moment, Hendra just feels right."

Making this album had been in the back of Ben's mind "for a long time" as a sequel of sorts to his folk debut before he "threw in my lot with Tracey" [Thorn] in Everything But The Girl after they met in their Hull student days. The ultimate catalyst for the new record was the death of Jenny, his half-sister.

"She died unexpectedly in 2011 at the age of 58 and I knew that she'd very much wanted to read the story of the family I was writing and find out what I'd unearthed, so that was a terrible blow," he recalls.

"There was other stuff that I wanted to say, so I went down to my studio and picked up a guitar for the first time in ages. There are always guitar around the house and a piano, but I'd been concentrating on playing records for ten years."

In contrast with his Everything But The Girl days, Ben decided to use open turning on his guitar, but he soon sensed he needed a foil to play "old-fashioned lead guitar" on the album.

"That's why I turned to Bernard Butler, who I'd met at a party two years earlier," he says. "He brings the blues, grit and dirt and overdrive to his playing, and in my mind I could hear the two elements working together, like Mick Ronson on the early Bowie hits and Denny Laine with Paul McCartney's Wings, bringing the dark to the light. The sound became quite impressionistic and grainy, which suited the way I was writing the lyrics."

Writing solo songs again after 30 years has been "like riding a bike". "Once you can do it, you don't forget, though it becomes harder to impress yourself, so you're constantly creating and rejecting," he says.

"I have quite a strange work process. i don't get up at nine and start writing or recording. I can only work when I'm not working, like five minutes before I'm supposed to be going out, when I'll grab a piece of paper and will quickly try to make something something happen. I'll capture something on my iPhone and come back to it two days later, and if it still impresses me, I'll develop it."