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Following Gary Numan’s Minimoog epiphany at Spaceward Studios in 1978, and with Tubeway Army in the can, he was ‘desperate’ to get back into the studio and record new songs he had written at home on an upright piano. So, in December 1978, just a month after the debut album had been released, Numan, bass guitarist Paul Gardiner and drummer Paul Lidyard were booked into Gooseberry Sound Studios in Gerrard Street in London’s Chinatown. A cheap 16-track studio, it was popular with post-punk and reggae bands such as Creation Rebel and Killing Joke.

Initially, Tubeway Army demoed ‘Me! I Disconnect From You’, ‘The Machmen’ and ‘Down In The Park’. Beggars Banquet was impressed with the results and the group got the nod to record the album there. Numan didn’t have any of his own synthesisers, so he rented a Minimoog and a Polymoog (he was surprised to see a Roland SH2000 keyboard in the studio, but noticed that there was a hole drilled into it to keep it chained to the wall and prevent it being stolen).

Two stereo master tapes of 11 tracks were made and a month later, in January 1979, the group returned to the studio and recorded three more tracks. The album was produced by Numan and engineered by John Caffery, who had worked with Jona Lewie and went on to engineer Joy Division’s Closer.

Numan has said recording the basic tracks at Gooseberry Sound amounted to only five days in total; Tubeway Army also recorded a John Peel session around this time. The album was then finished at the more upmarket Marcus Studios, with mixing by Rikki Sylvan of the synth-punk band Rikki And The Last Days Of Earth. Sylvan went on to work with Numan on his follow-up solo album The Pleasure Principle.