It will be the first record after almost 10 years in the wilderness: Skunk Anansie split up in 2001. Late 2008 they announced working on new material.

After six weeks Mark and his fellow Skunk Anansie members had come to the end of the writing process and whittled 80 ideas down to 25 songs. States the drummer:

\"I love the process of song writing in Skunk. We all bring ideas to the table and can fling them in no matter what they are, melodies, lyrics, drums and bass and guitar lines are all up for debate. You\'d think it would take an age to get anything done being so democratic but not when everybody is of the same mind, i.e. if it\'s a great idea it\'ll get in.\"

From there the musicians had to get really ruthless with themselves, put any personal attachment to any songs to one side and just choose the best songs. That\'s how 25 became 15 became 14 songs.

The seven-week recording process features Chris Sheldon at the helm for 10 of the tracks and then Jeremy Wheatley for the remaining four.

At the moment of writing Mark Richardson had already finished all his drum tracks with Chris and has started on some of the programming aspects that will go underneath some of the songs.

The band\'s greatest-hits album, \'Smashes And Trashes\', came out on November 2, 2009. The 15-track career-embracing album features classic moments from Skunk Anansie\'s three lps plus three brand new tracks.