Anechoic Chamber, Liverpool University

Playing in an anechoic chamber is a slightly strange experience, but one i recommend to you. There are no hiding places at all, and you can hear little rattles and overtones that you wouldn't otherwise notice, and the complete absence of any reverberation at all is a little disorientating, though you might not notice it so much on the recording, as close miking gives a similar effect.

St Georges Hall, main hall

St Georges Hall is a gibongous neo-classical Victorian building on Lime St - if you stand with your back to the station, that's what you're looking at. Inside it's a huge hall, lots of marble and granite with a curved roof, with a cathedral-like acoustic. The reverb is, i'd say, 8-10 seconds, with a comb-filtering effect going on, as certain frequencies are thrown back to you. All that statuary makes you ponder on mortality a bit, cos those Victorian bods must have been pretty eminent to have their own statues up there (presumably at their own expense). You've never heard of most of them, so if you're thinking of having yourself carved in marble for civic display, i'd suggest that you don't bother - it'll only make young persons say "who the hell is that?" in 100 years time.

St Georges Hall, small theatre

This isn't like the main hall at all. The theatre is a little 400-seater, and the statues are artistic ones of underdressed young women. I'm guessing it was built for chamber concerts, and there is a grand piano on stage. We weighted the sustain pedal down and played into the open lid. At the time we recorded in there, there was no power, and we had to run 75 metres of cable from the balcony of the main hall - it hadn't been used as a theatre since the 1970's, so there was a delicious feeling of having our own secret time capsule.

Wallasey Tunnel

Wallasey Tunnel is one of the road tunnels under the Mersey. You can't just wander in and start playing, that would be dangerous. In fact, that evening one of the tunnels was closed for maintenance on the Wallasey side, so we were allowed in on the Liverpool side to record.

Greenhouse, plot 21, Sefton Park Allotments

As you may have guessed, not a random choice as this is phil's allotment. We serenaded the tomato plants, and the blackbirds warbled back at us.

the Grapes, Mount St

This was a social night for an organisation called Creative LETS - as you can hear, it was just in the corner of the pub, so a fair proportion of the audience was just people who'd come out for a pint, which made for an interesting evening all round, i think...

Picton Library, William Brown St

Amazing room. The Picton Library is a round room with a domed roof, which acts as a parabolic reflector. There's echo, there's reverb, and it's all wildly unpredictable. We could have stayed all night.

Street & Alleyway near Penny Lane, Wavertree

Just outside phil's house, as you might imagine. A neighbour's burglar alarm was going off, to underpin the music.