Six entries from Ed’s diary relate to the recording of ‘How To Disappear Completely’ (two quotes from Phil and Nigel, probably from the official message board, are placed in between):

July 27, 1999

a pretty frustrating day, but now we’ve been doing this for so long, you realise it can’t all be like last week. it starts well with a different version of ‘how to dissapear’ and ‘everything in its right place’. we then get sidetracked by a couple of loose ideas for songs (one is very like the Fall). However we have definitely lost our way with ‘ you and whose army’- it was sounding great last week, so what happened today? time to go home.

September 1, 1999

i read a rumour from the internet [never believe a single nuance - sd] that we are supposed to be collaborating with ‘godspeed you black emperor’ on ‘how to disappear’ – this person cited a number of chance occurences, including such impossible coincidences as ‘they came to see us at a gig’. if that were sufficient corroborating evidence then, judging on the bands i’ve seen recently, you can hear us with ‘the divine comedy’ and the mighty ‘asian dub foundation’. twice around ‘follow me around’ – mmm. not great, but salvaged by ‘you and whose army’ – jonny thinks that voice and guitar are all that’s needed until the end part; and it sounds right; or at least it’s definitely a place to start. run through ‘optimistic’, cuttooth’, and ‘up on the ladder’ for nige, who’s down for the day to do some wiring and ‘studio arranging’.

December 2, 1999

more work on ‘how to disappear’… after phil did his drums last night, jonny came up with an outrageous martenot part – multitracked it sounds like the string section from mars. jonny has this uncanny ability to bring in weird chords, that at first distract you but after a couple of listens completely make sense…it’s just a matter of getting on his planet. brilliant. coz and i tied up our respective bits and it’s sounding fairly complete. not bad for a demo. thom was immersed in protools/cubase land in

the other studio. the song now has a really strong arrangement and the rhythm track is pumping………..onwards to friday.

this diary is long overdue – sorry – i’m not sure why it’s been so hard to post something. alot of it probably has something to do with the way that we have been working over the last six or so weeks.tracks have had to be completed and approached in new ways so that up until last week we hadn’t actually played together in a room since thom’s b/day in early october. so at times the process has felt quite disparate but then that’s part of being in the studio.

so hopefully this is now going to be a daily update.

(december 3rd 1999)

Phil: "Parts I & II are finished – the final movement is proving a little tricky though."

(january 19th 2000)

Nigel: (when asked if the song had gone over 10 mins): "No no no no no no. It’s going good I think. haven’t touched it this year. 6 minutes, I hate people who exaggerate."

January 24 – January 25, 2000

want to try and finish the bulk of what we’ve started, which may sound obvious but there you go…….so had what seemed like a pretty unfruitful day on ‘how to disappear’…….try and get it away from that band thing with an acoustic guitar, which may have been alright when we were making the bends, but let’s face it has been done to death by both us and every tom, dick and harry guitar band. went down a few cul-de-sacs………all part of the process.

today however has been a quite different affair. still on the same song. jonny found the one chord thing; it’s to be played by the strings(to be recorded soon)…..in fact jonny has spent much of the last two weeks scoring and arranging strings in his room; which is a huge undertaking as 24 string players are going to be playing precisely what he has scored and these people are professionals….thom has this evening just done a wonderful vocal and the song is beginning to go another way. bad day, good day, good cop, bad cop.

February 4, 2000

what an amazing day. fantastic string arrangements by jonny and what players. many many thanks are due to john lubbock(who conducted and organised) and the string players from the orchestra of st. john’s, smith square. the whole session was the complete antithesis to the ok computer experience; firstly rather than de-camping to some london studio we used an old abbey near us with the most fantastic acoustics to record in. i think nigel was totally blown away by the whole sound of it. but most importantly john and the players were so enthusiastic about it all…..jonny has certain things that he wants/wanted to try out that aren’t your usual string arrangaments. and rather than dismiss his ideas ( which is what happened on the ok computer session) they were open-minded enough to try them. john lubbock even handed over the conducting reins right at the end for jonny to try out an idea of his. there is no way that he would have been allowed to have done that at the abbey road session. brilliant players and people.

we needed this session after what has seemed an incredibly draining week.