SONGS OF INNOCENCE, SONGS OF EXPERIENCE

Moving to a new studio, and with band members taking on new roles, with their new album The Manic Street Preachers continue to innovate and experiment.

- Philip Wilding

Eighteen miles, give or take. That's how far it is by road from Cardiff to Newport. Seven years ago, during the recording sessions for what would become their Resistance Is Futile album, the Manic Street Preachers ended their ongoing lease on Faster Studios in the heart of the capital (Nicky Wire: "grimy") and moved east and bought the Door To The River Studios in Newport. The surrounding area can best be described as bucolic - an adjective we use about a half dozen times over the next few hours as we stare out of the studio's picture window, through the thicket of ash trees and down to the transporter bridge in the distance. The scene, a Welsh archetype of lush countryside and heavy industry, is framed by a milky-white light that is part hazy sunshine and partly the promise of rain. Welcome to Wales.

The dauntingly large mixing desk, so big it had to come in through the picture window, dominates the room in this former family home come-rehearsal space and studio. One of Richey Edwards's old stage jackets sits framed at the top of the stairs. Smaller ante-rooms, once spare bedrooms one assumes, splinter off the main landing, one filled with shelves of drums, literally floor to ceiling, another with a row guitars that curves off around the corner and out of sight.

"My few basses are shoved over there in the corner," sighs Nicky Wire.

James Dean Bradfield is making coffee, and explaining how the desk was brought over from the famed Rockfield Studios and transplanted to a cottage in Caerleon. "A Farewell To Kings," he says, listing some of the albums that were captured on that mixing desk in its former home.

"A little bit of Queen, we believe, and definitely stuff like Graham Parker And The Rumour and Echo And The Bunnymen. We've just bought ten grand of parts for it which will see us through, because when stuff breaks in it it's nearly gone.