In March 2022, Ben Howard was sitting in his garden when he found himself unable to think clearly, form sentences or speak for almost an hour. A month later, after the same thing happened again, the Ivor Novello Award-winning singer-songwriter learned he'd suffered two TIAs (transient ischemic attacks - known as mini-strokes). "It was out of the blue," says the 35 year-old. "It was a confusing time."

That June, after a month of inconclusive hospital tests Howard and his band returned to Le Manoir de Léon recording studio in south-west France, where they'd previously worked on his acclaimed third album Noonday Dream. The result is Is It?, a lush, sonically splintered album which captures Howard working through those moments of seismic shift. "I found it impossible not to dwell on the absurdity of it, that with one tiny clot, one can lose all faculties. It really ate into the writing of the record".

The songs range from the peaceful quotidian "Days of Lantana," to cut up samples and driven beats of "Walking Backwards," the formers' pitched and warped Linda Thompson chorus reminiscent of Malcolm Mclare's "Madame Butterfly." "Moonraker," a song about climbing in the Guadarrama mountains touches on the meditational, while in the cyclical "Richmond Avenue" Howard talks of shared childhood moments with his father.