Ed O'Brien

Ed O'Brien talks to Darren Paltrowitz in lockdown, a week after his birthday and over the virus himself. Earth's working title was The Pale Blue Dot, from Carl Sagan's words on the photograph Voyager 1 took in 1990, and what he took from it was the call to see the bigger picture. Why, he asks, do we keep building aircraft carriers?

He knew “Shangri-La” would open the record once it was recorded. He played most of the instruments, though not drums. “I'm a crap drummer,” he says, if a pretty fine one on tambourine and shaker. He wanted Nathan East and Omar Hakim after seeing them behind Daft Punk at the Grammys, met Daft Punk's manager on a Radiohead tour, and in autumn 2017 East and Hakim came to Wales for three weeks. In 2013, at the school gates, where their children were at the same school, he told Flood in the cloakroom how much he loved Foals' Holy Fire; their wives were already friends, part of a group of mothers trying to get the school to serve better food. Later he played Flood some demos, hoping he would produce the record but not wanting to presume. After about four songs Flood asked to produce it.

Earth came out under the name EOB, which goes back to woodwork at seven or eight, where he put his initials on his woodwork and the teacher called him yob. He has watched one film in lockdown, Being There, with the children.