"We wanted to take things slowly because of our friends, The Nine Black Alps. They did things quickly and lots of people jumped on it and there was this almost instant backlash," explains Jon.

A backlash in Manchester, but isn't Manchester supposed to look after its own?

"Perhaps it was bigger in Manchester because of the bands trying for years and it happened to Nine Black Alps in just a year. It's really annoying when you see people do that with bands," he continues. "I think we just wanted to make sure we got everything right. We didn't want to make an album that was kind of rushed between touring and everything. We kind of wanted to just get an idea of what we were doing at the time, working out the songs for the album, which Dave picked together perfectly. 'Gravity & Crisis' wasn't recorded until about two months before we went in for the recording. Then again we didn't want the album to take quite this long to get released. It was supposed to be out in January."

"It worked better for taking the time and not rushing releasing it," states Lee. "But in hindsight if we could have done everything that we did do instantly we would have preferred that. Things kept happening, which put it back."

"Good things of course," says Stuart smiling.

Interview by Andrew Mclean 2006
Photography © The Longcut and Andrew McLean 2006