This album started almost accidentally, with the rediscovery of some very old synthesizers, still in their flight cases at the back of the garage. This gave me such a blast of nostalgia that it wasn't long before they were being wired up again, the WD40 was coming out for sticking keys and crackling pots, and I was experiencing the familiar sensation of having run out of inputs on my mixer, again. Before long I started looking at the modern interpretations of this hardware, and some virtual analog and DCO based synths joined the fun. Yet through all of this, one thing that didn't work was soft synths - though I tried several. Each time I used them - even with some pretty fancy controllers - the music stopped "breathing" for me, perhaps something that defines me as a child of the old school when it comes to musical creation. So in the end, almost the whole album is just digital audio recording of hardware synths, and with the exception of a couple of drum patterns (and the samples on My Electric Rain Hat), nothing is sequenced. The PC was only used for final effects and mastering. There is something about playing physical synthesizers using knobs and sliders in realtime rather than with automation that brings it all to life for me - even when on one occasion I had to hold a note down with my nose, because I'd run out of fingers. The physical joy of the performance of the piece is something magical, not in spite of the physical limitations of myself and the instrument, but because of those same limitations. Perhaps that is what this album is all about in the end: the marrying of music technology at its most simple and pure, with the emotion of the musician. When synthesizers first arrived in the world, many panned them as not being real instruments, yet if this album shows me anything, it is that this could not be further from the truth.