It started off with just acoustic instruments. Gradually electricity crept in. Then there was occasional poetry, scratch DJ’ing, a storyteller, weird electronic experimentation, random texts, bursts of live radio broadcast, kitchen utensils...

Sometimes it's soup-like for all the wrong reasons. Too many ingredients combined with insufficient care can result in the music being reduced to a sort of sonic mush, with little clarity or coherence. But this is less and less the case; increasingly often it's interesting, quite listenable, and occasionally it takes us by surprise with its elegance and synchronistic beauty. This is probably related to the sort of musical 'group mind' which appears to be gradually emerging.

If anyone in the collective feels like they want to play more structured music, then they are free to create whatever kind of parallel project they like, with whomever they like, Droner or otherwise. A few projects have already emerged as a result of the COTD network forming: Object (a noise-art trio comprising Simon, Phil and Dan J), Children of the Sun (a one-off acoustic Hawkwind covers band involving Matthew W, Simon and Henry) and Pulse (an 'improvisational danceband' based around Henry and Richard with various combinations of other Droners). An improvisational dub band called "Dub Magnitude" has just been initiated by Mick, while Matthew W, Henry and Keith have begun playing as a semi-structured-but-primarily-improvisational acoustic trio called Orbis Tertius? (although the name may change), with a view to casually involving various other Droners in due course. There's no reason why numerous other projects can't emerge in the future.

Another cauldron-like feature is the diversity of our musical backgrounds. Prior to COTD we'd been collectively involved in various musical activity that could be classified within such genres as folk, jazz, punk, western classical music, blues, folk-rock, prog-rock, avant-garde experimentation, hiphop and electronica.

It's the perfect reservoir of musicians from which to create something. We're already in the habit of getting together regularly and playing in the most relaxed circumstances imaginable, so there's been extensive opportunity to get to know each other musically. If you can freely improvise with someone, then you'll probably find that you can play partially-structured music with them much more easily and imaginatively.