"I feel like I’m tied to this music. My vocal parts couldn’t be sung by anybody else. I have lived through this music.”

These New Puritans frontman Jack Barnett has such a strong connection with his band’s third album, Fields Of Reeds, that he chose to revisit it in a one-off expanded Barbican Centre show last month featuring his touring band augmented by brass, strings, voices, percussion, electronics and more.

“When I get to the end of an album, I don’t want to listen to the album ever again as I will keep hearing the mistakes rather than anything that worked out,” he says. “It takes a while before I’m able to listen to them properly.

“I really enjoyed doing this Expanded show – it’s like the piece of music is living and breathing. It can change and take different forms. It’s been good fun making little tweaks and changes.”

Field Of Reeds was characterised by its quieter piano-heavy, minimalist sound – occasionally breaking out into brass and skittering percussion on highlights such as The Light In Your Name.

It was a world away from the band’s electronic debut, Beat Pyramid, and its critically acclaimed more experimental follow-up, Hidden.

As Barnett has toured the album with a septet, including guest Portuguese vocalist Elisa Rodrigues, he admits the Field Of Reeds songs have changed dramatically.

“Now we are at the end of the UK tour we are doing things to songs such as V (Island Song) that we hadn’t necessarily imagined at the beginning of the tour,” he says.

“As a band we are big enough to make a lot of different sounds but small enough that we still gel – it’s not a tanker we can’t turn around.”

For the Barbican show on April 17, he also put together a second set called Lost Chords, recreating a couple of old These New Puritans songs with new arrangements.

“It’s music that fell between the cracks, that I want to be out there,” he says. “I came back and looked at them in a slightly different way – completely changing them so they were effectively new pieces of music for the concert. They have found their final form. We won’t necessarily release the music, it will just be this live form.”

The Great Escape show is set to be the last in his touring band’s UK run for this album – with Barnett disbanding his current septet in advance of his next project.

Field Of Reeds came in the wake of founding keyboard player Sophie Sleigh-Johnson’s departure from the band. “These New Puritans is always expanding and contracting,” says Barnett. “We’re not hemmed in by having any particular line-up. Generally it is always myself, George [Barnett, his twin brother on drums] and Tom [Hein on bass] live and in the studio, with a lot of music played by other people.

“It’s fun bringing in all these different characters. They have a huge effect on the music.”

Singer Rodrigues was one of the characters who played a big part in how the final album and ensuing tour has finished up.

“I had written all these parts and it was a matter of trying to find the right singer,” he says.

“It was obvious these vocal parts were not for me. The play between male and female voice became important in the music.

“I listened to a lot of female vocalists and came across Elisa. Her voice has a purity and accuracy to it, but it is real soul at the same time. On a basic level I love the sound of the Portuguese voice and the consonant sounds the language has.”

He admits he has had the most fun on tour with his current line-up, but now the Barbican show is over he will start looking towards new musical projects.

Although he didn’t listen to any particular music before recording Field Of Reeds, he may have discovered a new way of working as part of experimental UK group Current 93.

“With Fields Of Reeds, generally I wrote the music and it didn’t change hugely from the start to the end of the album in terms of recording,” says Barnett.

“With Current 93, they got a lot of people to do a lot of stuff, and it was a matter of fashioning that stuff into the final album. It was an interesting process – they were all great people.”

Playing with the collective at the Union Chapel was also a welcome change of pace.

“It was strange and enjoyable to not be at the front of the stage,” he says. “Even to be sitting down playing keyboards. It was funny not having the final word.”

  • Tickets £19.25, wristband top-up £7, festival bundle £67. Visit greatescapefestival.com