Six is the second album by English alternative rock band Mansun, released in September 1998 via Parlophone. It was released in the UK and Europe on 7 September 1998, and in the US on 20 April 1999, with an alternative running order, different artwork, and the re-recorded single version of the title track. In an interview prior to the release of Six, Paul Draper stated that the "interlude" "Witness to a Murder (Part Two)" was included to separate the album into two parts as a tribute to old-style vinyl albums. Background The main musical palette of the album were created out of guitar ideas that Draper and Chad coined at soundchecks, on their tour bus and in hotel rooms, and were then "blended into wordy and complex tableaux." Recording Wanting to capitalise upon their increasing live skills, the band recorded the basic tracks on Six live in the studio, firstly at Liverpool's Parr Street Studios and then later at London's Olympic Sound Studios. Chad said: "There's a lot of horrible, dirty sounds on there as a result. There's all sorts of spill - guitars over the drum takes, drums over the bass - purely because we were just in a room together. I think that if a producer had tried to clean it up and separate it all, it just wouldn't have the same feel." After the basic tracks were recorded, the group added on the album's "dusty effects," a lot of which were guitar effects. The band decided that if any of them wrote a new idea to jam, such as a riff, they also had to create a new guitar sound. They repeatedly used the TC Electronics Fireworx, a then-new rack processor which contributed to some "fantastic sounds." Chad said that "it doesn't so much process the sound of the guitar as completely change it. On some patches the notes you fret just trigger sounds; it's quite random." Other pedals used include a Colorsound Tone Bender, a Daddy-O, an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff, a Rat fuzz and, in helping to achieve a "really shitty chorus sound," a vintage Electro-Harmonix Clone Theory. In addition to usage of the Eventide DSP4000 and Bell BF20 flangers, the band also put Chad's guitar through a Korg synthesiser on occasion while messing around with the synth's filters, while having to tape one of the synthesiser's keys down prior to playing guitar through it. Draper