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and for the music that I'm into as well. I called him up one day and I just said it was pretty damn good
what we did. We talked about it, and he said, yeah, it was, wasn’t it? That late night jam we had on
the two guitars, that's great. That kind of stuff. I said, do you think we could make a record together,
or one of us said that, do you think we could? Well, maybe we could, yeah. Why don't we start writing
for it and see what comes out and if we can't make an album, let's just make an EP with four tracks.
Let's just see what we've got. As I say, lockdown started and we none of us could see each other for
a year or whatever it was, but I’d written a few songs. Chaz had put down some music ideas and in
mid to late 2021, we'd both been busy through that year as well, so it kind of took a back seat.
Mid late 2021, we started recording. We recorded the two songs that I'd written and Chaz, as I say,
being a multi-instrumentalist, we didn't need anybody else. It was quite an interesting way of working.
Chaz was playing drums, bass guitar, keyboards and recording it. While it's great, of course, to bring
in a band and, you know, suddenly if you bring in a band, you've got five opinions of how a song goes.
Where we were very focused because it was just the two of us and we started recording in September
of 2021 and what we did was we had, as I say, I had two or three songs that I'd written, but that was
all. So what we did was recorded those, and then I didn't see him until I'd written a song, and also
until we’d come up with a music idea between us. He’d send me ideas. I'd send him ideas. But once
we were ready to record, I'd go over there. We'd record the song, we'd mix it, we'd finish it, and then
we'd disappear again and write another. So the next song didn't exist until the last song was finished,
and I'd never made a record like that. I found it very liberating, and I found it very interesting because
each song was like a completely separate chapter. Usually when you go into the studio to make a
record, you know the whole album, the day you arrive, whereas this wasn't like that.
BiTS: So Michael, how long did it take to make the whole album? It must have been a couple of years.
MM: About a year, a year and a bit. Probably a year and a bit. Yeah, it was a year and a half, let’s say.
BiTS: I see from the record cover that the recording studio is shown as ‘room in the garden’. Is that
a kind of euphemism for something?
MM: It's just literally like a summer house building in north London. A summer house building just
away from the house with a computer and a pile of instruments and a couple of microphones.
BiTS: How wonderful.
MM: I mean, it's not any kind of flashy recording studio. It's a little room with a Mac and a couple of
microphones and stacks of instruments. Chaz is amazingly creative in that room.
BiTS: And the other thing I want to ask you is whether you have a favourite track? I've got to say,
first of all, that I think the album is absolutely terrific. I'm going to be doing a review of it very shortly.
I think it's one of the best things that you've done, to be quite truthful with you, but do you have a
favourite track on the album at all?