Nuno: what is your favourite song (excluding  the one from the coming album)? Why?
John Taylor: I'm all about the new album, playing it all day every day. On the last tour I enjoyed dusting off 'Sound Of Thunder' and medley-ing it with 'Hold Back The Rain' and 'The Reflex'. I enjoyed playing on 'Electric Barbarella'..

N: how did Michael Patterson end up producing this dd record? who invited him?
JT: There was no one else we all wanted to work with. Mike Patterson had done some mixes for the last album which were never finished, and then he mixed the VH1 concert for us. He's an amazing sonic architect and he has a vision for Duran Duran.

N: tell us about the producing process - what is it exactly?
JT: Jeez.. Writing a song and producing it are almost one and the same these days. We are like 5 painters attacking the canvas, sometimes together, sometimes seperately. Once we have agreed on the chords and stylistic direction for the track, which means we have bass, drums, basic guitar and keyboards, then Simon works to turn his initial lyric and vocal idea into a full song. That can take weeks. In the meantime we are fine tuning the music constantly, adding and subtracting parts.

N: do you honestly see this dd record among the 5 best of 2006? Why?
JT: Among the 5 best of 2006? I don't understand. What I do think is that it is the best Duran Duran album in twenty years.

N: you know that dd are not accepted by the establishment as good musicians, they are still looked at as a hand full of pretty faces and not much else; how will this record finally contribute to the erradication of that image?
JT: That's not my business. All we have to do is make the best album we can.