The album itself was recorded shortly after the break-up of Spiritualized's Jason Pierce and Kate Radley, the band's keyboard player. Radley had secretly married Richard Ashcroft of The Verve in 1995. Pierce, however, maintains that much of the album, including "Broken Heart" and "Cool Waves", had been written before the breakup. "If you write a song like "Heart", you have to make it feel like what it's like to have a broken heart," he said. "That's what making albums is all about. Otherwise it's just field recordings."