In March 1998, a few weeks into the Chipping Norton sessions, Gregory abruptly quit the band. Partridge told journalists that Gregory left because he grew impatient with the recording of the orchestral material and wanted to quickly move on to second project, which would have consisted of rock songs. He attributed Gregory's frustration to diabetic mood swings ("one minute he'd be quite jolly, the next minute he's 'this is all shit, destroy it, wipe it, it's all terrible'"). Moulding was not present for what he called an "enormous row" between Gregory and Partridge at the studio, but he corroborated that Gregory's diabetes caused "terrible mood swings, and his negativity was sometimes hard to take. But also, there really wasn't much for him to do on this record and he felt left out." Discussing the incident at Chipping Norton, Gregory said Partridge had behaved like "a cunt, frankly." Partridge said "I really blew up. I had a go at everyone but a lot of it was directed at Dave, telling him to pull his weight and get into it more. I don't think he ever forgave me."