John Leckie on XTC and The Dukes of Stratosphear

yeah yeah that was the inspiration obviously it was the ken scott and the john cage thing it's just you know it's random thing i think radio head used to have a johnny greenwood used to have a radio shortwave radio on stage you know and every night he'd turn it on you wouldn't know what was going to happen

you're working with tape as well and on tracks like 25 o'clock you must have just had a lot of tape edits as well and cuts and then putting stuff together is that right

Yeah.

Yeah, but that's the way we worked, really.

You know, it was like, you know, they may not play it all the way through, so you'll do a drop-in.

They'd never be copying and pasting as such, you know, but the basic track may not be played in its entirety.

They may mess up the solo, and so you just drop in on the one of wherever it is, on agreement, or just tell them to play... and drop in and hope for the best.

And if it sounds a bit odd, so much the better.

You just cover it up with something or inspire something else.

So yeah, there's a certain spontaneity and you kind of work fast, not through necessity, but that is the pace of what's coming, of what the ideas are.

You know, there's this bit and that bit.

And there were demos.

I have no recollection.

It's only in later years.

Have I seen their demos? And I have no recollection of hearing demos.

They may have played them once or I certainly never had a copy of them.

So yeah, Andy and they must have known what they were doing.

And Ian Gregory as well, the drummer, he was just great for someone who was not used to being in a band or playing every night or being in the studio.

He got it straight away.

And he tuned his drums to accommodate what we were trying to do.

You know, if you wanted a Ringo Thud kind of thing, you'd go for that.

Or if you wanted a kind of Pings kind of thing.

And he was really great.

And the rest of them as well.

Did you ever have reference points? Because when you hear certain tracks, whether it's the song itself or it's the sound of the record, you can often tell, I'm assuming, for example, 25 O'Clock is Electric Prunes.