'I need to communicate. If it's awkwardly - so what?"

An unfailingly optimistic Edwyn Collins tells Craig McLean about his new album, the aphasia a double stroke has caused, and his connection with a certain Orange Juice fan in No 10

- Craig McLean

The landscape surrounding Edywn Collins’s Clashnarrow Studio is a winter wonderland. The field sloping down to the road, visible through eyeline-flooding picture windows, is covered in snow, a crisp, sparkling, white blanket reflecting the pure blue brilliance of the January sky.

Beyond the road, the northern edges of the small, east coast town of Helmsdale, a 100-minute drive north of Inverness in the Scottish Highlands and 51 miles south of John O’Groats, the northernmost tip of mainland Britain. And beyond the town’s thin, built-up strip, the North Sea: another kind of sparkler on this sunny day, its horizon marked by the whirring sentries of the Moray windfarms, their turbines turning and glinting 14 miles offshore.

If the world outside Collins’s hillside studio is a glorious place, the space inside gives it a run for its money. It’s stuffed full of instruments and recording equipment, old and new but mainly old: vintage gear hoovered up by the former Orange Juice frontman over the years, firstly via myriad contacts forged over almost five decades in the music industry and more latterly via eBay. The 65-year-old’s faith in the wonder of old-fashioned, non-hi-tech equipment is reflected in the pithy, in-joke name of his record label, AED – it stands for Analogue Enhanced Digital.

Does he still spend a lot of time on the internet looking for gear?

“No – Grace has advised me to stop,” the Edinburgh-born musician replies, referring to his wife (and manager) Grace Maxwell. Was he wasting too much money?