In the summer of 2003 Aqualung went into the studio for a week to do an exploratory session for the album that became Still Life. It was exploratory both because the songs were still very sketchy, and also because Matt had decided we would record all together in the classic 60's style. This was the first time I had recorded in this way, despite many good intentions to try it with RUTH and the 45s. My recording studio experience began in the early 90s when the prevailing technique was to separate everything as much as possible and build up tracks, starting with the drums and ending with the vocals, by overdubbing everything to a click track. This was the time when 24 track, 2" tape was king and the emphasis was on leaving all the options open for the mix. There is nothing wrong with this approach per se, but it works best for arrangements that are very fixed, and for sounds that are very precise - in other words, all the stuff that engineers like, who tend to be more interested in the signal path than the feeling of the music. It certainly worked for our band because we'd come to record with the arrangements worked out and so it was just a technical process. The main drawback was a tendency to over-record because you'd just keep adding stuff and presuming you'd weed it in the mix, which you never did.

The Still Life session was the opposite approach - we were five musicians fleshing out the arrangements of skeletal songs in one room and committing to them. It seemed to me that the soundscape you listened back to once you had a take was far simpler and more coherent than the track-by-track method. It was also a very different musical experience to play altogether, trying to create the sweetest sound and knowing that if you fucked it up you all had to start again. Of course, this is not news to anyone who's interested in making records, but it was illuminating to hear the difference for myself.

Because Still Life featured this big, warm, band-y sound, Matt put together a new band to perform it, which featured Dave Price, who played drums in the studio, and Alonza Bevan playing bass. During rehearsals for our tour with Feeder, it occurred to me that it would be great to borrow Dave and Alonza and spend a day recording in an even more stripped-down, live way. What I wanted to achieve was a sense of 'loudness' and energy with the least interference from the recording process. (I found the new material I had recorded earlier sounded exactly the same as it had always done, so it was time to change the approach). Mostly, I wanted to sound like Led Zeppelin and the Beatles and not Menswear.

So in December 2003 I booked a room at the Terminal rehearsal studio in south London and brought along some guitars, mics and one of the now-archaic ADAT machines we bought to make the second RUTH album, and we rehearsed and recorded the backing tracks for 6 songs on six tracks in 12 hours. When I got it back home it sounded almost exactly the same as usual, but we had managed to capture more of the feel I was after.

I had set up Vanity Press in 2001 because I didn't know what I was going to do next, and I liked the idea of having a place where I could do stuff and sell stuff to the vanishingly small number of people who were interested in it. In the back of my mind was always a plan to use it to release some of my own music. Now that I had half an album on tape, I decided I should put the rest of it together for my own enjoyment, and not worry about what it represented as a career move.

The next January, Aqualung went on tour as a two-piece. This left lots of space on the tour bus for one of the support acts, one of whom was an Irish musician who called himself Duke Special. From the first night of the tour, it was clear that the Duke was the owner of a very fine, hard, clear voice. We got on well, and it wasn't long before we were guesting on each others' sets. At the end of the tour he asked me if I'd be willing to play some guitar on his next EP, and I said I would if he'd sing on my album. I thought it might sound a bit like the Undertones.

I would have quite happily had The Duke sing all the songs, but initially I sent him Fast as I can, Hey and So fine so as not to alarm him. We soon discovered that his range was considerably lower than mine. Hey was a stretch and Fast as I can was impossible. I do have a high voice and so tunes tend to be pitched quite high, rising to very high during the exciting bits - it's something you have to be careful about.

In the end The Duke contributed vocals to five tracks. Since I would have to sing Fast as I can, the album couldn't really pretend to be a single thing with a consistent voice, so at that point it became a compilation that I would 'present'. Although that meant I could pretty much put anything on it, I decided to restrict it to the guitar-y, real-drums, male-vocal side of what I do, because I still wanted the tone to remain fairly constant. The remaining tracks were demos I'd made over the years and two 45s/RUTH songs that had never been released. It seemed only natural to get Matt to sing on those.

I toured pretty constantly with Aqualung for the first half of 2004, but when Matt went on extended paternity leave in May, I finished off the remaining recording and mixed everything (in some cases for the third time) with some helpful hints from my old friend Tony Perretta, who also helped me master it. It's amazing what you can do in your spare bedroom.

I remember shopping at Tesco's one time years ago, and joking with Matt about how they should do music in their low-cost 'Value' line. What would that actually sound like? It would have to be very similar to branded versions, but somehow ... cheaper. I had the image of the CDs in the rack with the blue stripes and I thought 'someone should do that'.

I've always loved advertising (even aside from car advertising) and corporate packaging. ( I remember making posters for Gravel Monsters gigs at college and sticking on the little 'the best to you' logo Kellogg's put on their breakfast cereals.) It's just funny to me. Since no one had done it by the time it came for me to make my album, I thought it might as well be me. The only downer was the fact that Tesco had by now updated their Value range with a much more swishy, aspirational look. But the classic shitty look was what I had in mind, and with some assistance from my graphic designer friends, my long-cherished dream of Value Music was fulfilled. Just in time, I guess. In the iTunes era, conceptual artwork gags will become a thing of the past.

I can wait no longer to buy Value Music, take me there right away please.