Rees: "The thing on the left is a Saz. It's Turkish, and it's got seven strings, tuned in three courses (three, two and two strings.) The strings are nylon — classical guitar strings or even fishing line will do — and the frets are just thin strips tied round the neck. You can move them if you want. And quite often if you don't want too. The tuning pegs are pretty dodgy, they're very primitive, so it's not the sort of instrument you can use live much. It sounds good, though. It's got a very drony, quite nasal sound.

"On the right is a Turkish fiddle. It's metal-stringed so it sounds tinny and sharp, fairly piercing. We use it tuned to A, D and D but like a lot of these things it's guesswork, there is a definite lack of information about how they should be tuned. Again the tuning pegs are dodgy, so this one doesn't get to be played on stage much.

"And at the back there is a Gopichand. It's from India where they're a Folk instrument. It's got a skin on the bottom to which is attached a string that goes up to the peg at the top. You pluck the string and squeeze the sides to alter the pitch as you do so. It makes this high, pinging tone which sounds almost like some weird synthesizer noise but obviously much more real and human."

Nigel: "That's a tongue drum — it's African and it's played by hitting those tongue-shaped bits of wood on the top to get various notes. Obviously you can't change the pitch, though, so we generally have to tune all the other instruments to it. We put it through the PA live via a C-Ducer contact mike, usually with a normal mike pointed towards the top as well so one picks up the round, deep tones and one picks up the attack as you hit it. Obviously you have to be much more accurate so you play from the wrists rather than the conventional drumming style. At first it's quite difficult to adjust to hitting that accurately."

Rees: "These ethnic wind instruments are the sort of thing you can talk people into bringing back from holidays or trips to other countries quite easily.

"The ones on the left and the big one at the front left are all Folk flutes of various kinds, Chinese and Japanese. I think they're called Shakahuchi. You blow across the top of them like you would over a milk bottle, you don't blow into them like normal flute. And you can bend notes as well, get a really Oriental sound. Although some of the smaller ones sound pretty much like recorders, really.

"The one with the bulge in at the front right is an Indian snake-charmer, an authentic one. Except for the gaffa-tape on it, that's ours. Because it's cracked.

"The two with the horn shape and the mouthpieces at the back right are a Zuma, from Turkey, and a Sona from China. They are basically the same instrument — the idea crops up with very minor differences all over Europe. The Turkish one is extremely loud and harsh, extremely strident, and the Chinese one is brighter and shriller. They both produce a brassy screeching noise, a sort of distorted honk.

"And the one in the middle at the back is a double-barrelled flute from Yugoslavia called a Droinitza. It's a bit like simplified pan-pipes, and if you're good you can play two different tunes at the same time."

Rees: "The oblong thing on the left is a Mbira, an African thumb piano. I don't know whether you'd count this as percussion or not, but it makes a plunking noise, very staccato, which you can tune by moving the metal strips on it up or down. We mike it up by putting a cheap acoustic guitar bug inside it and it sounds really good."

Nigel: "Behind that is the talking drum. That's from Nigeria, and it's got seeds inside to add a rattle to the sound. You hit it with a curved stick, which is really hard to get the hang of when you're used to the more conventional ones. There's a thong going round the drum which you twist to change the pitch; it squeezes the strings which connect the two heads together and tightens them. The heads are calfskin, I think.

"On the right are the Moroccan bongoes. They're a little like tablas, the classic Indian drums, but they're made from pottery with goatskin heads. One's really high, almost a 'ping' sound, and the other's deep. But that changes with the temperature — when it's really hot the skins tighten and they sound absolutely great. Apparently the native drummers put them into a fire to tighten them up, but I can't see myself lighting a bonfire in the middle of a 24-track studio.

"The two things at the front are scrapers, of course — one made out of bamboo, which we bought, and the other made out of a piece of bone by Rees. It sounds much better, the home-made one."

Rees: "Actually, I was walking across the local recreation ground the other day on my way to work and I saw this great piece of horn I'd have liked to use for a shaker. It was lying on the ground where a circus had been parked, and obviously it was something that had been chewed by a lion. But it still had a great lump of animal hanging off it, and I couldn't see myself going through town carrying this huge, bloody lump of meat..."

Nigel: "This is my home-made attempt — you could call it a barrel gamelan. Or an electric hammered zither. It's just a barrel with a few bits of wood on top and a few bits of electric guitar. The bass strings stretched on the top are usually tuned to octaves and they're amplified through an old Hofner humbucking pickup connected via volume and tone controls, and effects like chorus and delay. You hit the strings and get a sort of rhythmical drone sound, deep and sort of pounding."