DAVID Gray will play York Barbican on March 30 next year in the only Yorkshire show on a 17-date tour to promote his first album of new material in four years.

Gold In A Brass Age will be released on March 8 on IHT Records/AWAL Recordings, preceded by this week’s new single, The Sapling. Produced by Ben DeVries, son of producer and soundtrack composer Marius, the album explores new electronic textures and sound palettes,along with new production techniques.

Using a cut-and-paste approach to the arrangement of songs, Gray’s atmospheric and experimental undertones are evident throughout. The album’s title is drawn from Raymond Carver’s short story Blackbird Pie and informed by the regenerative cut and thrust of Gray’s adopted home of London, plus a fascination with the natural world that has long since consumed his time outside of making music.

The striking artwork, for which Gray sought out Peckham tattoo artist London Boy, depicts an Emperor moth with the City of London captured between its wingspan.

"With this album, my default position was to do everything differently," says 50-year-old Gray. "I didn’t think, ‘this would be a good hook' or ‘these lyrics could work for a chorus’. I was keen to get away from narrative.

"Instead of writing melodies, I looked for phrases with a natural cadence, so that the rhythm began with the words. I reimagined where a song might spring from and what form it could take."

Written in breaks between several month-long tour stints – including an co-headlining run of American shows with Alison Krauss – Gold In A Brass Age finds Gray hushing his vocals in many places to an intimate falsetto. On the album-opening single The Sapling, for example, he ruminates on the brevity of life, tempered by layered vocals and a brass section featuring cor anglais and baritone sax. “Time ticking by is a theme that recurs throughout the record," he says. "Fragility, renewal, a changing of perspective."

Gold In A Brass Age will be Gray’s 11th album in a career that spans more than 25 years, several Brit and Grammy nominations and three British number one albums, led off by his breakout, multi platinum-selling White Ladder in 1998.

The Sale-born singer-songwriter previously played York Barbican on his Mutineers Tour in July 2014 and Lost And Found Tour in May 2011. Tickets for his return go on sale on November 9 on 0844 854 2757, at yorkbarbican.co.uk or in person from the Barbican box office.