From an interview with Richard Fairhurst...
"'Stars' was written in 1991, inspired by Massive Attack - which I'm sure everybody has managed to spot. Originally it was in a major key; if you try and work it out, play a major key along to the melody of 'Stars', it's quite a revelation. I won't say any more than that! And that was our first single, and it seemed to set up shop really nicely for the whole album.
"'Anywhere' was our first ever Dubstar song, written at the start of 1994. The arrangement was based around Chris's guitar line, which is quite dramatic. And again, the chord sequence that goes with the melody was originally something completely different - which is why, although it's nice and poppy, there's the odd stage in it where it's very, very interesting.
"'Just A Girl She Said' is probably the most acoustic of all the tracks in the end. That was the one we got started with - it's a poem, basically, which Sarah wrote. What would be quite interesting would be to contrast that with 'Dream A Little Dream' by Mama Cass. There's some really interesting harmonic ideas that Mama Cass copied from us [ahem]! It also features live drums.
"'Elevator Song' was written in 1987, when I was still at school. There have been so many different versions of that song - it's something that Chris and I did in a very early stage when we were working together. It's probably my favourite melody, it's the fastest track on the album, and it'll be the new single!
"'The Day I See You Again' is the most recent song on the album, and it came from a lyrical idea. There are some quite sad words, so the idea was to tie together the words to fit the mood - and the fact that the chorus goes from one key to a major key gives it a certain impact, a dramatic irony. The lyrics were originally written in 6/8 rather than 4/4, and if you listen really carefully to the vocal melody, you can probably spot that. There probably will be a 6/8 version of it around at some point.
"Unfortunately, when we're writing stuff, everything ends up in 6/8! I don't know why; 6/8 sounds very dated, so you have to be careful. 'Week In Week Out' is another 6/8 song, which is a composite of a couple of different songs that were around from very early stages. Also, there are some interesting samples in there: I don't know if anybody will spot the Nitzer Ebb snare sound! There's a nice bit of vocal reverb at the front and at the end, which is something we'll probably do more with.
"'Not So Manic Now' was something we were going to drop, funnily enough - and then it gets to number 18! The chord sequence is great, it's a great song. The band who wrote it are Brick Supply - they've never done anything, it was just a track from a demo tape which was given to us by this bloke in the Arena in Middlesbrough. And there's a nice jungle break-beat going on in there, which you can only ever hear at the end of the album version, just chugging along.
"'Dorian' is another old one. Sounds a bit like the '60s to me and, again, features live drumming. When we first did 'Dorian', it was the most pop thing that we'd ever done - which is kind of ironic now - and consequently it was called 'Popdorian' in a sort of self-conscious light.
"'Not Once Not Ever', believe it or not, originally sounded a bit like John Foxx - yeah, very early Ultravox. I personally think it's the least successful track on the album but, believe it or not, it's number 14 in the Russian charts! It features a nice bit of time-stretching at the beginning, on the drum break. Again, the song is very lyric-led.
"'St Swithin's Day' is a Billy Bragg song. It features some nice keyboard sounds from a Kawai K1R - great machine. I think the K1 is probably one of these machines that'll come back and have the status of something like a Juno 106. So there are some nice sounds from that; there's a break-beat, and that is pretty much intact from when we first ever did it, which was back in the early stages of Dubstar.
"'Disgraceful' is a love song! But if you listen really carefully to the first six or seven bars, everything in those bars is in 6/8 apart from the drums. Basically we just replaced the drum track, and somehow it ended up in 4/4. And that's pretty much why it's on at the end, so that's something you can watch out for. If you're interested!"