Neil Cowley talks about garden sheds and analogue creation with Peter Bacon.

You could call it old school, or perhaps back to basics. Pianist and composer Neil Cowley doesn’t search for musical inspiration on Caribbean Islands or up in the Alps, whale-watching in the South Atlantic or looking for the Northern Lights at the opposite end of the earth. Nope, he looks for it at the bottom of his garden.

“It’s called ‘daddy’s shed’ by my family – or my ‘swear box’. It’s at the end of the garden, it’s got a piano in it.”

And he doesn’t use all the high tech gizmos and computer programmes developed to aid the working musician, either.

“I sit in front of the piano with a piece of manuscript paper, and I scratch away at ideas. I avoid a computer wherever possible because, in previous incarnations, I used to write on Apple Mac programmes and things. But I’ve scrapped all that, consciously, in order to be able to write in that very analogue way.

“And when I feel like I’ve had enough of the lonely times in the studio at the end of the garden and I’ve got enough ideas, then I rather nervously present them to the band. Bass player Richard Sadler learns what’s in my left hand and drummer Evan Jenkins develops the general groove, and then we rehearse it from there.”

The result this time around is Radio Silence, the Neil Cowley Trio’s third full-length CD. It is a very impressive piece of work, a clear development from its predecessors, but more finely honed, its edges more rounded, its scope broader. It’s certainly the band’s finest yet.

It reveals a remarkably tight band – perhaps not surprising in the light of the countless hours these three have spent rehearsing and gigging down the years.

“We’ve been playing a long time now; we know how to press each other’s buttons. Compared to other bands that are not constructed the way we are, we can work pretty quickly. We’re playing acoustic instruments, we’re not too caught up in sounds or anything – we’re not Human League, running through digital keyboard patches. We’re playing our acoustic instruments, so it’s pure music really.”

Is Neil a purist when it comes to keeping it acoustic?

“Certainly on the piano side, it comes from my brain… it likes to process simple things. Someone famously said each piece of equipment in the studio is one piece of equipment further away from a good idea. And I adhere to that. I like there to be just finger, ivory, hammer, string and then audience. If I clutter it up with anything else I can get really confused. It’s not borne out of any purist sensibility; it’s borne out of how simple I have to keep it for myself.”

Keeping it direct certainly seems to work when communicating with an audience, and they also like the humour in the band’s performance.

“They engage with the silliness, the sort of non-verbal banter that goes on between us. People always say ‘you seem to be enjoying yourselves’. We can’t help showing that we’re just having so much fun. My dad was one half a piano comedy duo and I think it’s in my blood not to take myself too seriously. I’m constantly looking at myself and thinking: ‘what a berk!’

There is clearly a rich strain of fine British humour running through the music, but, again in that fine British tradition, is there a little danger lurking in the shadows, too? Certainly the listener is often thrown off balance.

“What that probably highlights is that I am always dead scared that people are going to get bored, and I do have a pretty low boredom threshold myself. And it’s also maybe the way the music is put together at source. Being alone in a room is in itself quite a melancholy place and I might go to dark places mentally when I’m writing...

“Another reason is the patchwork way in which the music is sometimes put together, and because of my range of interests. I am classically trained with a bit of rock here, a bit of jazz there, a bit of funk in there, too.”

* The band plays the CBSO Centre on Saturday (June 5). To book call 0121 780 3333 or go to www.birminghamjazz.co.uk.

* The Neil Cowley Trio’s Radio Silence is now available on the Naim Jazz label.