Every musician needs to take action to keep themselves fresh from time to time, but James Ford and Jas Shaw of Simian Mobile Disco have really gone to extremes this time: they’ve completely abandoned every tool they previously used to make music. The duo have never been ones to follow anyone else’s methods in any case, but for the recording of their new record, Whorl, they’ve started from the ground up and created an entirely new electronic system, and recorded everything entirely live, from scratch. Over the years, James and Jas have accumulated mountains of incredible vintage synthesisers and other general sound-making boxes. But this time around, no laptops; no racks of hardware; just one synth and one sequencer each, which they took into the Joshua Tree national park in California and recorded the album in front of an audience. “This forces us to commit,” says Jas; “when we record with it, this is the system, and there can be no turning back.”