This new work comes as something of a departure from his previous releases on XL Recordings. Whereas Ash Wednesday (2007) would not have been itself without the guidance of friend and producer Ethan Gold, and the eponymous Elvis Perkins in Dearland and subsequent Doomsday EP (2009) were group efforts, I Aubade was on the whole an autonomous project. 'I had the impulse to hear what would happen if left to and with my own devices', says Perkins. 'Not surprisingly this is the thing that sounds the most, to me, like myself.'