although the development is largely unconscious." Writing and recording Invisible Touch was recorded between October 1985 and February 1986 at The Farm, the band's private recording studio in Chiddingfold, Surrey. They were joined by engineer and producer Hugh Padgham, who had worked with the band since Abacab (1981) and produced the album with the group, with Paul Gommersall as assistant engineer. Earlier in 1985, the studio was upgraded to a plan supervised by Masami "Sam" Toyishima. The group approached the writing sessions for Invisible Touch with a greater sense of confidence, as they had now become a big live act in the US and had reached a new level of commercial success worldwide. As with Genesis, they entered the studio with no preconceived ideas and developed songs from recorded jams and improvisations, a process Collins compared to as "close to jazz". The group considered their strongest songs were those arranged in this way, so they repeated this approach for Invisible Touch. Collins said: "You never quite know what's going to happen. It's just the three of us chopping away, fine-tuning and honing down all these ideas." A typical session saw the trio work from 11am to as late as 2am the following morning, and start with Collins setting up a drum pattern on the drum machine so Banks and Rutherford could jam ideas. Collins would then sing vocal lines, which created an atmosphere and the basis for a song. Collins recalled his impetuous attitude during the writing sessions and suggested bits of songs be pieced together as early as possible, but Banks and Rutherford were reluctant to do so. Many of the songs on the album evolved from Banks using the recording function on his E-mu Emulator to capture sounds in the studio, and listening back for potential sounds and rhythms that could be used in a song. The keyboard allowed just 17 seconds to be recorded. The album features Collins playing on a Simmons electronic drum kit. In order to capture more of a sound from the Simmons kit rather than feeding it directly into the mixing desk, Padgham also fed the tracks through a mixer and into a PA system before playing it "very, very loud" in the studio. Padgham later said that the Simmons sounded "a bit thin and toneless." Collins also used a Roland Pad-8, an electronic pad that triggers percussion sounds from the MIDI instruments