bandmate Griffiths took on a similar songwriting role for the first Tears for Fears album sans Curt Smith. Orzabal later recalled, "When I split up with Curt, I wrote with Alan Griffiths and we were extremely prolific. We’d come up with a song virtually every day. Al was a bit of a genius, able to make musical sketches that were easy to jump off and finish into a song. That was an amazing period, and it’s tougher to write with people you don’t know yet." Elemental was recorded at Orzabal's newly built home studio, Neptune's Kitchen, and was co-produced by Orzabal, Griffiths and Tim Palmer. Palmer's recent credits at the time included co-producing David Bowie's first Tin Machine album (1989's Tin Machine) and mixing Pearl Jam's debut album Ten (1991). Orzabal stated, "I'm kind of used to working autonomously... I would say that this album is less of a solo album than Seeds of Love, in fact. The team I worked with was amazing -- Tim Palmer the co-producer, and Alan Griffiths, who co-wrote the stuff." Parts of the album have a more alternative rock sound than on previous Tears for Fears albums; this sound would be explored further in the next Tears for Fears album, Raoul and the Kings of Spain (1995), which Orzabal also recorded with Griffiths and Palmer. (Griffiths would also collaborate with Orzabal on the latter's first and only official solo album, Tomcats Screaming Outside [2001].) Interviewed twenty years after the release of Elemental, Palmer recalled, "In the 80's, [Tears for Fears] had a reputation for spending a lot of time making records, but that’s just the way they are. I tried to speed things up and got the record done in six months – not much of an achievement, but it was fast for them." Orzabal had a recording studio built at his home to record the album, stating, "It's an old photographer's studio that we converted. It was called Neptune's Kitchen, and we used a lot of copper that was doused in acid to look like it's been underwater and all the colors are sort of greens and blues like the sea. And there's a weathervane on top of the building which is a whale... It was necessary, economically, to work at home because I spend so long in the studios on albums that the bills mount up, and doing it at home was