This album wasn’t recorded in a proper studio. We dragged Greg Shepheard, his computer, a mixing desk, piles of electrical boxes with dials and switches, cables, microphones, stands, instruments, mattresses, big bits of cardboard, manky old blankets, bags of pasties and pies down to the house on the Somerset Levels where our drummer Mike lives with his partner Jill. It was as if some kind of parasitic music-making monster had gripped that little house in its grubby, rubberised electric tentacles for a week. The downstairs toilet had a microphone pointing at it and a guitar amplifier sitting on it. The sofa and the telly were shoved into the corner to make space for a drum kit. The dining table had an eight foot mixing desk covering it completely. We had to re-record some takes because the sounds of passing tractors had found their way through doors and windows, through the mattresses and cardboard sheets covered with blankets and old curtains, and into the microphones. We stayed there for a week and got the bones of the record down. We then moved out and took a smaller amount of equipment to Joe’s flat. We recorded the vocals and some steel guitar in a cupboard. We stayed there a few weeks mixing some B-sides along the way. We then moved everything into the house where Greg lives, recording accordions, clarinets, mandolins, harmonicas, dobros, egg-slicers and vocals sitting on his bed. Tambourines and percussion were recorded in the bathroom. We mixed it in the tiny box room in the evenings. It took months. We drank a whole range of beverages to help the mixing along the way, including Grappa, Slivovice, Somerset Cider Brandy, Unicum, Genever, some really quite good Cognac, and some decent Islay malt.

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