Matthew ‘Murph’ Murphy has hailed The Killers’ Mark Stoermer for making Love Fame Tragedy’s debut album, ‘Wherever I Go, I Want To Leave’, "20 times cooler".
The Wombats frontman got the 42-year-old musician to fly out to Los Angeles to play bass on a song his first solo record and heaped praise on his talents which breathed "so much fresh air" into his collaborative side project.
Speaking exclusively to BANG Showbiz, Murph said: "He flew over to LA for the day and played bass.
"We hung out in studio and it just breathes so much fresh air into something when someone is as talented as him and when everyone else starts playing over it, it just makes it sound 20 times cooler in my head.
"It seems to be a good foundation to base this project on."
The ‘Moving to New York’ hitmaker loved having everyone in the studio with him rather than them phoning it in, and revealed he got them "drunk" "occasionally".
He added: "Everyone who guested on it, they all came to the studio and we hung out, and occasionally I had to get them drunk or whatever."
Murph tried to keep the guest artists – which include Bastille’s Dan Smith, Pixies’ Joey Santiago and alt-J’s Gus Unger-Hamilton – from his close circle of friends and didn’t want to keep them for too long, because they are all "busy people".
He added: "There were certain songs I had in mind for certain artists, but generally it was the ones I was closest to and wanted to come down to the studio.
"I said to them, ‘Can you just do whatever you want over two or three hours and I’ll just keep the best bits.’
"Then you don’t start going down rabbit holes and overanalysing everything, you just come in, play over stuff and then you figure out what works when they are not there, so that was kind of the best way of doing it.
"I didn’t want to take up too much brain capacity for them because they are all obviously very busy people."
‘Wherever I Go, I Want To Leave’ is out now.