Darren Tansley, Wob, Joseph Porter & Protag Neish

After Guns Of Castle Cary's disappointing production we made Nick Ralph promise to come into the studio himself for the next one. He did, sporadically, but most of the work was done in the end by Brad Grisdale. Fortunately Brad was more than up to the task of production. Unfortunately his kindergarden management skills required honing, as Blyth Power untamed ran riot across the recording and over dubbed everything including the kitchen sink, which you can hear bouncing down the stairs gracelessly at the end of Pastor Skull. High spots of the recording are all provided by Jamie Hince, who temporarily rejoined to beef up the guitar department. Low spots are the insensitive approach to dynamics and the lack of thought to the arrangements. When it became apparent that Midnight were going down the pan and would never release the album, some members of the band became so fed up with the unwieldy monstrosity that it had become that they stopped bothering to turn up to the studio.
Released now for its curiosity value Karpov does have its moments, among them the best recording of Stonehaven, and a pretty decent Carlisle.