With Verve Records guaranteeing full funding for "Laughing Stock" and offering not to interfere during recording, the band took full advantage of the scenario "and locked themselves away for the duration of recording." As with the band's previous album, "Laughing Stock" was produced by Tim Friese-Greene and recorded at the North London recording studio Wessex Sound Studios with engineer Phill Brown, and around fifty guest musicians, although a total of only eighteen guest musicians feature on the final album. Working in an environment influenced by that of Traffic's recording sessions from 1967 that Brown worked on, Hollis' vision with "Laughing Stock" was to "collect a group of like-minded musicians together" in the studio where he could then record the "perspective of instruments in physical distance rather than off the board," after which "each player gets to improvise around a basic theme as he or she feels it." The process continued over a long period of time, and ultimately the album took a year to record, although its liner notes state it was recorded from September 1990 to April 1991. The record was "only complete" when Hollis felt each guest musician had "expressed their character and refined their contribution to the purest, most truthful essence."