Dylan recorded his drum parts separately. In a Jul 2024 interview on YouTube, Howe described how he went about making the album: "I just find my way. [...] I mean, it appears I have a plan, but, in a way, what I'm really doing is exercising instincts and sort of guesses, really. Wild guesses. And that's how I got the backing tracks for the album was really by improvising on a keyboard and then having lots of these tracks [...] that all had a different tempo, they had a different keyboard texture and I was then beset with the task to kind of fathom out what were the best colours to add to that [...] was it an electric moment[?] [...] some of them were acoustic". He also said the album "[i]s quite different from I'd say all of my work, particularly Yes [...] although it has all the shades, I hope, of my Yes stylings". He said "Secret Mission" was one of the last tracks to be recorded. In another YouTube interview, from Aug 2024, Howe explained, "I got this keyboard, so I heard something kind of special in this. So I ended up doing about a dozen tracks with different sounds from the keyboard, at different tempos on the drum machine, just to kind of find out what I could lay down. And that's how the album kind of started, from a very different perspective than usual when I'm assembling parts of tunes I like. I like those chords here. I like that riff over here. But this kind of, like, had a more organic process". The album was made over a period: "I went on tour and came back to it and, you know, worked on Mirror to the Sky and then came back. So I use that same reviewing technique that I do, which is leaving things, reviewing them, coming back to them. When you put them back on, you know really what you're going to do." The album has some focus on Gibson guitars: "I was looking to keep the tonal choices a little bit confined. So I had different guitars. I didn't then need too many different kinds of electric guitars". In particular, there is focus on the ES Artist electric guitar. In a Sep 2024 interview, Howe explained that the "Spring..." tracks were the exception to this pattern of starting with the Novatron. He also described the album, "It isn't jazz, but it's free form music". "Up Stream" was one of the earlier tracks to be recorded. (HP, 13 Dec 24)This album has given me the opportunity to do something different [...] I bought a Novatron Summit keyboard and found that it had a wealth of inspiring sounds. It gave me a golden opportunity to create my own keyboard structures – chordal movements and structures that I thought were a bit different. I think differently on a keyboard, I don’t see the chords looking the same but then I had fun playing around with the guitar to see where that goes.
I’ve utilised most of the colours, as I like to I think of my styles [...] it moves from a steel, maybe, to a Spanish guitar. Because it’s a different sort of album, I’m not using terribly conventional chord sequences but things that give me a fresh feeling and opportunities to improvise and stretch out as well as be melodic and make this a nice tuneful experience.
I began feeding the tracks to Dylan. We get on great and he seems to know what to play around my guitar, it’s almost instinctive. Dylan and I fit together really beautifully.