In the early winter of 1996, after being dropped by Relativity, we were still intent on pushing forward as a band. Thick Records asked us to do a 7" picture disc, which seemed like an opportunity to cram as much recording into a weekend as time and budget would allow, i.e. business as usual. With our pal and Everlasting Belt collaborator Geoff Turner at the helm, we returned to WGNS studios, which had moved next to the Black Cat on 14th Street. There happened to be a blizzard that weekend and we were snowed in for the duration. Getting to and from the studio was an adventure in that way blizzards can be, especially blizzards in DC. The intensity and isolation this forced was definitely good for making us focus. We started late and ended later. When the weekend was over we had tracked the basics for 3+ songs and finished two of them for the Thick Records single before trekking up to NYC to open for Ted Leo at Brownies.

I recall staying up all night with Geoff, watching him try to make "Bela's Corvair" (which was really just the outro of "Perched Like a Parasite") into a more interesting beast. And watching him work out the pitch-shifting on his PC at a time when each rendering probably took half an hour. Next thing you know it was 6am and I-hope-this-is-cool-because-we're-definitely-done-for-the-night.

A few months later, in the daylight, we ended up remixing the track as "Bela's Device," with a more straight-forward approach than Geoff had conjured up. After almost 25 years I realize that Geoff, as usual, was just way more forward-thinking than I was. And some day soon his version will get the remaster treatment, too.

The WGNS session also included coaxing my college buddy, violist Jeremy Gershfeld, and his pal, Nat Chaitkin, an accomplished cellist, down to the studio to play on as many tracks as we could get them on. At the time none of these songs, particularly "Thinner Than Thin," had lyrics or melodies written, so their participation took a bit of imagining where those things might go and trying to maximize the fact we finally had a bit o' fairy dust at our disposal. I still love that Jerry incorporated a Bartok riff he was forced to learn in college into "Bela's Device," which is where the "Bela" in the title comes from.

We always managed to take a slightly experimental approach in the studio, but having had our previous experience in the studio be on a major label budget, I don't think we'd totally adjusted to the fact that we no longer had the money to keep working on the clock that way. But, even though we lacked record label cash, we still had Andy Wilkinson, who'd engineered Techniques of Speed Hypnosis. He'd come over from England to tour with us as volunteer roadie, sound guy and best buddy. Everyone needs a pal like Andy. And when we had the chance to get him to come into the studio with us, we did not hesitate. By this point I had moved to New York, so we decided to try and finish the remaining songs at a studio called The Place NYC (later Stratosphere Sound) that our friend Michael Hampton introduced us to. That's where we met Gary Maurer, who engineered the sessions with Andy, and where I ended up working for the next decade plus.

In keeping with the WGNS sessions, our NYC recording was a whirlwind of sleep deprivation and non-stop ideas. But the main thing I remember coming out of it was the feeling that no matter what happened going forward, this band had figured out how to make music together. It might not always be smooth, but in the end it was always satisfying. Even as I listen all these years later, I still hear the ambition and creative inspiration we brought to it, and the confidence of biting off as much as we could chew plus a little bit more. When we walked out of the studio after about a week of work, I felt like it was the best thing we'd ever do as a band.

That confidence comes through, I think, on the two rockers, delivered with the poise of a band who'd spent the better part of the previous year on the road. And the ambition is hard to miss in our dub approach to "Thinner Than Thin," which brought together so many of the things that had been gestating in our collective musical brain. Who cared if we didn't have label money anymore? We'd figure that out. Right now we needed to figure out how to fill the gaps in our 9-minute jam!

And how could we go wrong with an arsenal of musical support at our disposal? We already had what I felt were the best sounding tracks we'd ever done, we had f*ckin strings, maaaan, and now we had Andy Wilkinson! In New York! Combined with our interest in electronic music, we had Gary's actual knowledge of club music, as well as his friend, chanteuse Dominique Durand from Ivy. I'm still not sure exactly how he convinced her to sing on the song for us, but I'm damn glad she did. You can judge for yourself how successful our gap-filling exercise was, but her contribution is perfect.

I think my biggest - and probably only - regret about the EP is that the two rock tracks on it are about as good as any rock songs we ever wrote and I had hoped more people would be able to hear them. And now they can, with thanks to Joe Lambert, as always, for bringing Edsel into the 21st century with his impeccable remastering.

Dischord Records still has a few copies of the original CD release if you're interested: www.dischord.com/release/114-5/extended-play