 Recording the album in Chipping Barnet with the band's bassist Tony Barber producing, "Modern" sees a strong electronic music influence, with electronic instruments and drum machines featuring on the songs, especially those written by Steve Diggle, who wrote five of the album's songs whilst Pete Shelley wrote the other eight songs.Although the album was recorded with the idea that it sounded contemporary, the album's sound was said to emulate new wave music from the early 1980s, including from Pete Shelley's solo career, and was also categorised as sounding like the art punk band Magazine, formed in the late 1970s by former Buzzcocks member Howard Devoto.One critic said that "rather than destroy the pop song they [deconstruct] it, playfully reinventing it as a catchy, self-conscious pastiche of itself."