WHEN CHEQUERBOARD’S DEBUT ALBUM Gothica was released some years back, its ambient soundscapes and accompanying graphics were impressive. Worried that they might be deemed too adventurous for the conventional music industry, I suggested, in these pages, that Chequerboard seemed an ideal project for an arts bursary. Sometimes it pays to make a wish.

"When you mentioned that, it was like a premonition," says John Lambert, the musician and visual artist who works as Chequerboard.

"There's a progressive gang in the art gallery (the Model Arts & Niland Gallery) here in Sligo," John explains. "There's usually a bursary for the visual arts, but they decided to test out a music fellowship programme. It's a new initiative. I moved down because I was finding Dublin claustrophobic. I've been here a year now."

It's been a year well spent: John was given the time, and studio space, to develop his ideas. As his delicate electronica began picking up airplay courtesy of enlightened DJs, such as Donal Dineen and John Kelly, Lambert began reaching a wider audience.

He even took the Chequerboard experience on to the festival stage at The Electric Picnic.

Mind you, it hasn't been easy: "I had a messy fallout with the American label and I had the wind knocked out of me for a year or two," he says. "I had to take stock. I realised I had to bin my teenage dreams of money and fame, and all I was left with was the music and the art. The motivation is to make as beautiful a piece of art as I can."

The exquisitely packaged Penny Black album vindicates his music fellowship in Sligo. "I had a rough sketch for Penny Black, which was meant to be a taut, guitar album," he says. "I love to hear guitar in unusual musical environments. I discovered, afterwards, that the notion was trying to marry classical guitar with glitchy patterns of found sound and stuff," he says.

Late last year, John held an art exhibition featuring the montages that eventually came to dress the new album.

"Things are looking good now," he says. "There's some sort of an engagement, now, where there are enough people who like the album for it to matter. For me, that's an amazing point to get to."

Chequerboard performs with Johann Johannsson at the Analog Festival on Friday 18th July --EC

- Eamon Carr