The album was not written in a single session or location, and Banks recalled the group had some difficulty in coming up with musical ideas. The extra time that Charisma allowed caused the band to adopt a more relaxed pace of working at first, which included periods of unproductive work, such as the constant reworking of ideas to the point where they no longer worked or those that led them back to where they started. The first sessions took place in what reporter Jerry Gilbert described as "a rambling old stately home" in Chessington, Kingston upon Thames, the group practising in the living room causing the neighbours to complain about the noise and impose a curfew. Collins did not remember the album being particularly difficult to put together, but said the Chessington sessions was where the basis of "The Cinema Show" was put together. He had been listening to the jazz fusion group Mahavishnu Orchestra which influenced him to play more complicated time signatures on the drums for "Dancing With the Moonlit Knight" and other parts on the album. Rehearsals then moved to London in a space beneath the Una Billings School of Dance in Shepherd's Bush, during which "I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)" was developed further. Hackett had not contributed a great deal of material to the group at this point, which was made difficult by the breakdown of his first marriage going on around the same time. Rather than pitch whole songs he instead devised guitar licks, all of which were used, and believed it gave the album a jazz fusion feel yet still remained very English.