the band's legal battle with EMI concerning their contract had freed them from the label, the band began searching for other record labels, and eventually, their manager Keith Aspden signed them to Verve Records, the jazz offshoot label of Polydor Records. Hollis was pleased that they signed Talk Talk because the Mothers of Invention were once on Verve. The band set to recording their new album soon after the contract was signed. Again hiring an array of guest musicians, producer/multi-instrumentalist Tim Friese-Greene and engineer Phill Brown, work began on Laughing Stock in 1990. Recording With Verve Records guaranteeing full funding for Laughing Stock and offering not to interfere during recording, the band took full advantage of the scenario "and locked themselves away for the duration of recording." As with the band's previous album, Laughing Stock was produced by Tim Friese-Greene and recorded at the North London recording studio Wessex Sound Studios with engineer Phill Brown, and around fifty guest musicians, although a total of only eighteen guest musicians feature on the final album. Working in an environment influenced by that of Traffic's recording sessions from 1967 that Brown worked on, Hollis' vision with Laughing Stock was to "collect a group of like-minded musicians together" in the studio where he could then record the "perspective of instruments in physical distance rather than off the board," after which "each player gets to improvise around a basic theme as he or she feels it." The process continued over a long period of time, and ultimately the album took a year to record, although its liner notes state it was recorded from September 1990 to April 1991. The record was "only complete" when Hollis felt each guest musician had "expressed their character and refined their contribution to the purest, most truthful essence." Hollis' discipline during the recording is well noted; Jess Harvell of Pitchfork noted that "the recording process has long been described as one of the most arduous and prone to control freakitude ever." Wyndham Wallace of The Quietus said that "what went on in that studio strengthens the belief that Hollis was on a crusade to push boundaries and perfect his art on an even grander scale than Spirit of Eden. Furnished with the opportunity to fulfil his most extreme creative instincts." Often working in darkness, "there was an effort to create a vibe in the studio sympathetic with the feel of