“I am not so sure,” Paul Hanley says, “because Martin is a frontman in his own right, with The Blue Orchids, and has been for far longer than he was a member of The Fall.” Bramah breaks in: “It would be hard to get somebody from the mid-period when Mark was definitely in charge. Because I was there at the inception, I know how The Fall morphed into what it became. It gives me some kind of authenticity. But to be honest I can’t think of anyone other than myself.
“I definitely thought this could be terrible,” Paul Hanley says. “Simon hated being part of a two-drummer line-up [in The Fall] with [the band’s long-time member] Karl Burns. Mark always used the idea he had a ‘spare’ drummer. But it worked really well, the two drummers.
Paul Hanley tempers this: “The whole ethos of The Fall wasn’t there. Mark E Smith wasn’t there. And he wouldn’t have approved anyway.” Listening to the album, the warm, thundering rumble of Steve Hanley’s bass is unmistakable on tunes such as Harlequin Duke and Aynebite. On top of this sturdy foundation, Hanley’s brother and Wolstencroft hammer twin drum kits: a four-handed engine of percussion, they are an aural blur of sticks in lockstep and quirky dialogue, operating both in parallel and in sequence.