IT took Vashti Bunyan 35 years to follow up 1970's debut album, Just Another Diamond Day.

Now, nine years after Lookaftering, the Godmother of Psychedelic Folk has made her third studio album, Heartleap, released on FatCat Records this week, when she will play The Band Room at Low Mill on Saturday night as part of her first series of live dates since 2010.

Only nine years, Vashti! "Oh, I know, lightning fast," says the English-born singer-songwriter, whose soft, warm voice carries a Scottish burr after years of living over the border.

"It feels particularly good at the moment, because the first vinyl copies have arrived at my door and they're very beautiful. The sound is so much better, much warmer on vinyl, and the warmth is essential in my music. I'm always staggered how a tiny bit of compression or a slight change of a decibel on a CD can make such a difference."

Such perfectionism is in keeping with an album that finds Vashti breaking free for the first time to be in control of the whole creative process, from writing and arranging to playing and recording in a home studio she prefers to call "a room dedicated to music and mess". "When my youngest daughter left home; I co-opted her room," she says.

The record was slowly pieced together since 2007 by Vashti, working predominantly at her Edinburgh home, whereas the first album was produced by Joe Boyd and arranged by Robert Kirby and the second by the bold hand of Max Richter.

By comparison, Heartleap feels far closer to Vashti's original version. "I do see it as the completion of a trilogy for all sorts of reasons," she says. "I know how slow I am and if I were to write another song next week, would I have to wait another nine years to complete another record|? I know I wouldn't want to do that.

"Not until the last song I recorded, Heartleap, did I know inside me that the record was complete. That song came to me very quickly, very unusually for me, just before we were due to do the mastering. Suddenly that song came to me and it did feel like a song I was always going to write."

Thirty years "in the wilderness" between the first two albums were in fact 30 years of motherhood, and when Vashti returned to making music again, "it was as if there had been a closing off and a starting again, as if I was just continuing". "Has my songwriting progressed since 1970? Probably not a lot.; I think I still write in a similar way, but it's hard to know what would have happened if I'd continued making records straight after Just Another Diamond Day," says Vashti.

She is certain, however, that Heartleap will be her last album. "I want to do something else; I don't want to pad out my music," she says. "I don't want to ever have that feeling of 'Oh, that will do'. I'm happy with what I've done so far and I don't want to do something just for the sake of it.".

Turning 69 this year, Vashti says she will still be treading the "self-obsessive path that I've been down". "I want to write the story of my life. I promised my kids that I would get down to writing the story of Just Another Diamond Day and beyond. Several times the story has been told by others but always slightly romanticised, and I'd like to write it from my memory, to see if I can."

Vashti Bunyan and guitarist Gareth Dixon play The Band Room, Low Mill, near Kirkbymoorside, on Saturday, 7.30pm. Box office: 01751 432900 or thebandroom.co.uk