Ted Hughes, John McLaughlin, current affairs and some pithy local graffiti all inspired Jack Hues to write Electro-Acoustic Works 20:20, the latest chapter in his fascinating late-career resurgence. Prog catches up with the singer-songwriter to find out more.

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Last March, just before lockdown, Jack Hues was driving down the A2 between London and his home town of Canterbury, and noticed one of the motorway bridges above him had been sprayed with the words ‘Frootbat Reset’. On the same drive a few days later, he saw ‘Frootbat’ had been sprayed on another bridge, and then another. The cogs whirred in the Wang Chung star’s mindSurely this was a reference to the animal purportedly at the root of the pandemic that put the world on pause? “Well, that’s what I thought,” Hues tells Prog with a smile. “It’s probably just a graffiti artist’s tag [signature], but I saw it as a really succinct summary of this whole ‘reset’. How better can you put it? It’s like shutting the whole world computer down and starting it up again.”

Frootbat Reset became the first song demoed for Electro-Acoustic Works 20:20. It’s the followup to Hues’ first solo album, Primitif, released the week before the UK shut shop and six months after he took the Outer Limits trophy at the 2019 Prog Awards. Not only did Wang Chung’s hardcore fans cotton on to that ambitious record, but it also earned him wider plaudits and renewed interest in his work.“That was lovely,” he says. “I was pleased with the response, because I did it expecting no response.The fact it was picked up by people like Prog, with no vested interest in liking what I do, was wonderful. I feel really grateful that people are curious enough to want to listen to it – without sounding crass, as an artist communication is your number one priority.”