Electron recollision in an intense laser field is at the centre of attoscience research and gives rise to a variety of phenomena, ranging from electron diffraction to coherent soft X-ray emission. We have, over the years, developed intense sources of waveform controlled mid-IR light to exploit ponderomotive scaling, quantum diffusion and quasi-static photo emission. I will describe our recent achievements in sub-Angstrom resolution imaging of bond breakage and deprotonation of a polyatomic molecule, the generation of isolated attosecond pulses at the carbon K-shell edge (284 eV) and application to soft X-ray absorption spectroscopy in condensed matter.