While the traditional recording studio is the location of choice when it comes to recording an album; there are artists who have recorded music from some rather unusual places including Sigur Ros who turned an inground swimming pool into a studio, and there have been numerous artists who have used their bedrooms and basements for recording. But perhaps the most unusual location is a hospital room!
Late in 2024, English producer and musician James Ellis Ford learned that he had an acute form of leukemia. While in the hospital receiving treatment, Ford wrote, recorded, and produced his album “Lost in Another World” from his hospital bed.
Speaking with “All Things Considered” on the making of the album, Ford said, “I’m used to making music every day, and it’s a big way that I kind of regulate my mental health and feel good about – and so I was isolated in a white room in a hospital, not able to really see anybody. But my energy came back a little for the first time, and I started to feel a bit better and had some creative thoughts and just had a kind of real overwhelming desire to make something, really, I suppose, to remind myself who I was.”
He continued, “my wife brought in a little table, and I had a microphone and a laptop and a small little keyboard and made the whole record in a couple of weeks. I wrote the lyrics and sang it and did everything in those weeks in the hospital. Yeah, you know, a bunch of new thoughts and feelings to process. And so I was just kind of singing. You know, first thought, best thought, really – it’s quite unfiltered, the stuff that I was singing. And I just sort of got on with it and really enjoyed it, quite honestly.”
Currently in remission, Ford has planned a performance on September 17, 2026 at The Horse Hospital in London.