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After travelling 300km past the Arctic Circle and jamming with a Norwegian chamber orchestra, singer/songwriter James Walsh (formerly of Starsailor) has released a new EP 'Live At The Top Of The World'. Fortunately, it's rather good.

Imagine this: you're 300km past the friendly side of the Arctic Circle in the Norwegian town of Tromsø – a place previously best known for its Arctic Cathedral (a kind of smaller, more angular version of the Sydney Opera House) and, err, for being twinned with Grimsby. The town has an orchestra, though, not to mention more than its fair share of inspirational scenery, both of which are at your disposal. If you can't find inspiration here, then you might as well hang up your guitar.

That's the situation ex-Starsailor frontman James Walsh found himself in earlier this year and the results of which have just been made available as the 'Live At The Top Of The World' EP. We caught up with James to find out how he adjusted to working with an orchestra, his Scandinavian surroundings and what we can expect from his November tour dates.

Tell us how the 'Live At The Top Of The World' EP came about…

"I've always been interested in artists who've used orchestras and orchestral arrangements – I'm a big fan of Randy Newman and Rufus Wainwright – but working with the orchestra up in Tromsø was quite a happy accident. I was doing some work with [songwriter] Sacha Skarbek on the soundtrack for a film called 'Lullaby'. Sacha had been spending some time up in Tromsø, because his wife is from that town, and it just so happened that they were trying to encourage artists to go over there and work with producers and arrangers. They wanted someone to take the plunge and go out there and use the facilities, and hopefully draw some attention to the area. It just seemed like too good an opportunity to miss."

One of the things we noticed about the song 'Man On The Hill' was the sense of space. Were you influenced by the environment?

"Definitely, it's inspired by this sort of beautiful and melancholic feeling that there is up there, where it's just a perfect place to visit, but I can imagine living there must feel quite isolated, especially for the young people. This place is so cut off from the rest of Norway, let alone the rest of the world. That song was inspired by the juxtaposition of this amazing scenery in this beautiful place, but also the downsides to that."

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