It is common for acts to talk about albums and key songs in their career after the fact – as things like album commentaries on Spotify and the Song Exploder series show. What is less common is them talking about albums as they are making them. Anyone who has ever heard the legendarily splenetic Troggs Tapes or watched Metallica’s passive-aggressive masterclass Some Kind Of Monster will know, recording studios are tinderboxes of emotion and not the kind of place you want a documentary crew sniffing around as you try (and frequently fail) to bottle lighting.

Past Is Prologue is a 12-part audio podcast series sitting as a warm-up for Pixies’ new studio album that is due in September. The album itself was recorded during December 2018 at Dreamland Recordings near Woodstock in upstate New York. It will not start running until 27th June but the trailer is already live on podcast outlets as well as Spotify. From June, a new episode will be released each week until the album itself comes out.

It is hosted and narrated by author Tony Fletcher who has written a range of music books over the years, including ones on The Smiths, REM, The Clash, Wilson Pickett and Echo & The Bunnymen. The series has been created with Signal Co. No 1 which describes itself as “a podcast label dedicated exclusively to music culture”.

The band used a special “video booth” during the making of the album so they could record their thoughts as the process unfolded. All band members and producer Tom Dalgety were also interviewed separately. The band – by their own admission and as shown in the loudQUIETloud documentary about their 2004 reunion – are not good communicators among themselves so it will be fascinating to see just how “warts and all” this gets.