He was no stranger to Goldfrapp’s music, having worked on ‘Alive’ and remixing ‘Rocket’ from ‘Head First’, but he was new to Alison Goldfrapp. ‘The Love Invention’ was recorded with Richard X, a producer with an enviable understanding of the politics of dancing. “I see this as being a much healthier, more sustainable way of doing things. “Nowadays you can just put stuff out,” she says.

With today’s dramatically changed music landscape, that created the time and space available to work on what became ‘The Love Invention’. It’s simply the way it was, the way she and Will worked together, and the way that artists, labels and the industry expected things to be done. Though it sounds like a bit of a treadmill, she insists that with only a few exceptions, she loved all of it. There is no trace of bitterness in Goldfrapp’s voice when she says this. For me, that meant when I finished being on tour, in order to write a load of new material, I went back in the studio with Will. So that meant all of my time was Goldfrapp, and because he didn’t tour with me, Will was always doing other projects and things when I was out on the road.

“You made an album, and then you went on tour, and then you went back in the studio and made another album, and then went on tour and so on. “Whenever we recorded a new Goldfrapp album, Will and I have always done it in a slightly old-fashioned way,” she says. Goldfrapp also attributes the fact that the idea of an album like ‘The Love Invention’ sat on the shelf for so long was because of a lack of time. “Both Will and I have certain skillsets that lend themselves to particular things and because of that, in order to do certain other things, other people need to be involved.” “We actually had several attempts at one point to make this type of album, but being in a duo is always about compromise,” says Goldfrapp, the solo artist. The strings on their debut, 2000’s ‘Felt Mountain’, were deeply reverential to classic 1970s disco and they covered Baccara’s ‘Yes Sir’ for the B-side of ‘Twist’, but the closest they got to an all-out rhythm-based collection was ‘Head First’, a 2010 album that featured some of the most resolutely high-energy songs they’d written by that point – proof, if needed, that they could turn their hands to any style they wanted. Yet for all the diverse territory they effortlessly occupied, they never made an album as unashamedly euphoric as ‘The Love Invention’. Each album felt like a reaction to the one that preceded it, yet each one was identifiably, uniquely, undeniably, wonderfully Goldfrapp in its sound. Trying to define their style was an elusive, endlessly surprising exercise, and just as you thought you had them pinned down, they’d return with a vastly different sound. Across seven albums, their focus was broad, moving effortlessly between widescreen, textural beauty through to moments of wild, electro-glam extravagance, as well as most points in between. Although Goldfrapp – the duo – were no strangers to upbeat, dancefloor-ready tracks, they never made a whole album of such material.

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