In May 2012 Paul Buchanan released his debut solo album "Mid Air", a collection of short, stripped-back songs mostly featuring just Buchanan's voice and piano, recorded with Calum Malcolm's son Cameron as the album's engineer and released on Buchanan's own Newsroom Records label. In a radio interview Buchanan mentioned that towards the end of the recording process he had called in Robert Bell to help out on two tracks ("Mid Air" and "My True Country") that neither he nor Cameron Malcolm were satisfied with. Bell also later remixed "Buy a Motor Car", which appeared on the deluxe edition of the album released in October 2012. The album peaked at number 14 on the Official Charts Company's UK album chart of 2 June 2012, while its title track "Mid Air" was used a year later in the Richard Curtis film, "About Time".