I put Baltic Fleet on and hours go by without even realising. The music is a totally immersive experience. You lose yourself in the sound of nostalgic indie guitars and swirling synths. The steady drumbeat and repetitive melodies keep you on track though; you feel determined and invincible.

The man making me feel this way and the mastermind of Baltic Fleet is Paul Fleming. After a few email exchanges I apparently find out "more than most" about him. I ask Fleming all about his time in Echo and the Bunnymen (he was their keyboard player for five years). I also find out what Yoko Ono is like to hang out with (Baltic Fleet played alongside the softly spoken icon at last month's Meltdown festival – their prize for winning Liverpool's GIT award.)

But none of this may have happened if Fleming had carried on boxing. He says: "Once, I completely lost my memory after getting hit in a boxing match. I regained it the next day but after that I decided to stick with music."

Fleming was, however, raised in a musical home, so the chances of going into music rather than boxing weren't too slim. He was born in Merseyside and grew up in Widnes. After watching his dad and uncle perform in their band at various concerts, Fleming started learning the piano. He was in his first band at the age of 13. The love for electronic music in particular started when he was given a hand-me-down synth from his dad so creating experimental electronic sounds has always felt "natural".

By 16 he had started producing using sequencers and samples. Then he put his business hat on and started selling mixtapes at college. Fast-forwarding a little and he found himself touring and recording with Echo and The Bunnymen.

"It was an education, a fantastic experience … I'd talk for hours with Will [Sergeant] and Ian [McCulloch] about how they produced each album. Will has an encyclopedic knowledge of good music and he opened me up to a wealth of bands and sounds that I'd never heard before."

While on tour with the Bunnymen, Fleming recorded what would become his debut album, Baltic Fleet, but had never planned to. It's clear that Fleming was bursting with ideas and wanted to make music at any available opportunity, whether that was on the tour bus, the plane, during soundcheck or at dinnertime, anywhere he could make music he did.

"One thing just led to another, the more I put down the more I wanted to do, momentum just built," Fleming remembers. But surely it was pretty hard making music on tour?

"I enjoyed the challenge of finding a space to work. I'd get up before anyone else did to lay down tracks or do it before soundchecks and sometimes I'd stay on after the band left for meals … Working on a laptop means it's much easier than you think, you can find the smallest space to work in."

Fleming was making a "musical diary" on his laptop while they went from place to place, capturing how he felt about the cities they played and the people they met, pinpointing Buenos Aires, New York, Sao Paulo and Japan as his favourite destinations.

After putting out a few releases independently Fleming was picked up by London indie label Blow Up and released his self-titled debut album in 2008. Last year he brought out his second album, Towers. This one was made at home overlooking an industrial landscape full of factories, chemical plants and the power station, which has pride of place on the album cover.

Fleming used to rebel against the landscape, but it became "the perfect backdrop" for the sound he wanted to make. Fleming now finds it "quite evocative looking out and seeing smoke billowing out of cooling towers into red skies."

As a young kid though he remembers thinking the Rock Savage chemical plant "looked like a huge alien space station". Now he sees it as "pretty epic", especially at night. It's "depressing and inspiring in equal measure," which are two adjectives you can certainly pin to his music.

As well as being influenced by his surroundings Fleming is inspired by Joy Division, David Bowie, Daft Punk, Chemical Brothers, Brian Eno and Neu!. It's the "timeless beat and groove" that he loves about Neu! and he thinks Eno's "textures and suspense" are most influential.

Now he has escaped the industrial landscape, he lives in the middle of nowhere in Lancashire so "the sound will evolve further … because there's much more space and I'm in isolation". Fleming says it's not just industry that influences him; life experiences obviously seep into songs. He told me Winds of the 84 Winter came together after he suffered "a pretty bad loss" and the song was part of the grieving process. "I can't just sit down to write a track, there has to be a spark, inspiration and some sort of concept."

Industry clearly inspires the music, with the second record being called Towers and being used as the iconography. I asked Paul what he likes about the cold, industrial North. "It's reality," he says.

One highlight for Fleming this year has got to be playing Meltdown festival alongside Yoko Ono and meeting her was a "real privilege". Fleming told Ono his "dad was friends with John back in the day so that felt like a bit of a full circle for me."

With an amazing 2013 under his belt Paul Fleming, alongside his mates who play with him at gigs, will be developing their live sound and he'll be working on his next record.