I Trawl the Megahertz

In 1999 McAloon detached both retinas and was left nearly blind for a period. Housebound, he listened to and recorded shortwave and phone-in radio, then fragmented the conversations and mixed them with new words to make source material for the album. The title track runs about 22 minutes and is narrated by Yvonne Connors, an American commodities broker in London who recorded her part in a Kensington hotel room on 25 October 1999. McAloon chose her because he wanted a record he could bear to listen to, and he cannot stand his own voice. He said the length matched what an Atari ST could handle.

Live strings came from Mr McFall's Chamber, with help from co-producer Calum Malcolm and the composer David McGuinness. Only Sleeping Rough has McAloon singing. It was released on Liberty under his own name because he feared fans would be disappointed by the lack of singles, and was reissued on Sony as a Prefab Sprout album in February 2019. The BBC's Chris Jones called it a work of troubling beauty, and Pitchfork's Sam Sodomsky counted it among the peaks of McAloon's career.