During that time he also appeared on MacGowan's solo album The Snake and The Levellers' self-titled release; he continued working as a musician and composer after leaving the Pogues.

On 1 January 2000, the Finer-composed Longplayer piece of music was started; this is designed to last 1000 years without ever repeating itself, and as currently implemented exists in both computer-generated and live versions.

[4] In July 2005, Finer won the PRS Foundation New Music Award[5] on the basis of his proposal to build a device that will automatically "compose" a song of indeterminate length by harnessing the creative force of the weather.

His proposal read: In March 2012, Finer launched Mobile Sinfonia, a global composition for ringtones, after developing it during a year spent as a non-resident artist at the University of Bath.

These include a series of hurdy-gurdy recordings, Spiegelei (a spherical camera obscura featuring Finer's innovative 360-degree projection system),[8] and Supercomputer, a 5 bit mechanical sculpture which computes minimal musical scores.