“Take
as long as you want, record it wherever you want, with whoever you want”
- Parlophone.
After
touring for most of 1995 (including supporting R.E.M. in Europe and America),
at the end of January 1996, we reconvened to start work on new material
at our rehearsal studio, Canned Applause, a roughly converted old apple
shed. Arrangements and parts to most of the songs were worked out
at this stage. Rehearsals lasted until March 1996, when we went on tour
to America and Canada for five weeks. This tour gave us the opportunity
to start ‘playing in’ new material. On our return to the UK, we played
several European festivals, culminating in two headline appearances at
Galway, Ireland, and T in the Park, Glasgow. During this time, we set up
our mobile recording studio back at Canned Applause, overseen by Nigel
Godrich.
Nigel
had engineered the Rak Studio sessions of The Bends, and co-produced with
us a number of b-sides, notably “Talkshow Host” as well as the song “Lucky”.
This song was recorded in September 1995 for the Help album, a compilation
released a week after its recording to raise funds and awareness for the
charity ‘Warchild’ in Bosnia.
By
July 1996, Canned Applause was set up for recording. It was the first time
we had attempted to cut album tracks outside of a conventional studio environment.
Despite the experimental and unconventional setting, four songs from Canned
Applause found their way onto the album. The songs were “Subterranean Homesick
Alien”, “Electioneering”, “The Tourist” and “No Surprises”. This last song
was, in fact, the first take from the first day of the Canned Applause
sessions. In August 1996, we returned to America to tour with Alanis
Morrisette, and again used it as an opportunity to play in new material.
Back
home again in September, we moved our recording equipment from Canned Applause,
and relocated to St Catherine’s Court. Set in a secluded valley just outside
Bath, it was the perfect environment to escape from any outside influences.
We made much use of the various different rooms and atmospheres throughout
the house, and our isolation from the outside world encouraged time to
run at a different pace, making working hours more flexible and spontaneous.
Again, the set-up was unorthodox: we played in the ballroom, with Nigel
Godrich recording us in the library. Thom sung “Exit Music (for a film)”
in the chilly stone entrance hall; “Let Down” was recorded live at 3.00
AM in the ballroom. This was to be the first of two month-long sessions
at St Catherine’s, the second one starting in November, after spending
October at home rehearsing.
By
Christmas we had almost completed fourteen songs. They were finished and
mixed in London during January and February 1997. The two songs left off
the album, “Polyethelene” and “A Reminder”, have appeared as b-sides to
our first UK single release, “Paranoid Android”
