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Pop punkers take you in the studio

With a band name inspired by a line in Toy Story, it’s evident that the quintet are all about looking on the brighter side of life. Sophomore E.P, Headway, is a musical testament to that fact, its 5 tracks bubbling with bright, upbeat effervescence. “When it comes down to it, pop punk is an absolute blast to play,” says vocalist Alex, his PMA unshaken by the crowded state of the UK pop punk community; “The scene might be a little saturated, but we try to make sure that our music isn’t paint by numbers pop punk and has its own character”. Ahead of it’s release on Friday, the band discuss the creation of the EP in the studio…

We recorded Headway at Suff Studios in Keighley, West Yorkshire with our good friend Matt Heap. His studio was in what looked like an abandoned factory in an industrial estate. There were no showering facilities, the gents didn’t work and Mitch to this day is convinced he saw a ghost but we loved every second of it!

Here’s how we recorded your least favourite pop punk record of 2016!

Day 1: Pre Production/These Few Months

We arrived late Wednesday night and Alex immediately got to work recording the entirety of the guitars and vocals for These Few Months, whilst the ever professional Mitch and Kris got to work on the crates they’d brought to keep them entertained…. We then started tracking our pre-production. Matt was very helpful and made some awesome suggestions that really improved areas of the tracks. 5 hours later our pre-production was complete, which was a good job considering it was near enough 5am! We then checked our sleeping arrangements: 5 dudes on pretty small leather couch… we were in for a comfy few days!

 

Days 2 & 3: Drums, Drums and a bit more Drums

We woke up equally as tired as when we went so sleep and started recording the loudest of instruments, the drums. Simon smashed his way through Growing Backwards, This Song Sounded Better in My Head and Worth My Time in this session, despite being horrendously sleep deprived. Matt really pushed us to get everything “metalcore tight” and just from the drum tracks alone, we could tell how big these songs were going to sound! It was bonfire night so we took a break for an hour that evening to attend a small pub bonfire and firework display in Keighley. It must have been a sight to see: 5 sleep deprived guys in their early twenties, dressed like fourteen year olds, and the living embodiment of Morrison’s hot chicken counter… it’s a glamourous life!

On the Friday we left early to grab a shower at Mitch’s mum’s house as we were about to be issued ASBOs for poor personal hygiene. We then got back to start drums on the final track, Coming Storm, which is easily the most technical and difficult song on the EP. This took us a whole day to lay down, due to Simon pushing him further and further to develop the best sounding beats and fills that he could, a lot of which he wrote on the day. While this became frustrating to him at sometimes, he looks back and says he’s glad he took the time he did to get it sounding as good as it does!

We finished all drums at around 9:00pm and decided to hit the Wetherspoons in Keighley for the all-day breakfasts and some human contact. This was another night where we fell asleep involuntarily, in positions that can only be described as damaging to the spine.

Days 4 & 5: Bass, Guitar & Vocals

Days 4 and 5 in the studio were focussed mainly on guitars, with Alex doing some vocals in between.

Kris started off day 4 with recording every single song on bass in 1 sitting. It was in this time that he worked out some funky basslines which he put into most songs. He managed to get all his bass done in a few hours, which meant he could spend the rest of the day sleeping and drinking and trying to tell us all some spooky stories. Mitch began with the guitar work by recording the rhythm guitar for Worth My Time and This Song Sounded Better In My Head, with Sam recording the rhythm guitar for Growing Backwards afterwards. That day took surprisingly longer than we thought it would, because when Matt heard Mitch playing along with the Growing Backwards lead, he brought out all these delay pedals and got Mitch to record the entire lead guitar there and then! The lack of sleep and surplus of Foster’s didn’t do too much to hinder the flow, as Mitch managed to get all the lead, bar the solo, done in that evening.

Day 5 started with Alex both breaking Matt’s computer and our spirits. We honestly thought we’d lost all of our hard work and Kristian had begun to search for weapons to fight Alex with. Luckily, everything was backed up and we made a (very late) start to the final day! Sam started getting the lead guitar down for Worth My Time and This Song Sounded Better In My Head, to which Alex then recorded the majority of his vocals over. The evening came and Sam started, unbeknownst to him, the longest guitar session of the week for Coming Storm. Matt again picked out a plethora of pedals to get the chorus lead guitar sounding just right, as well as a horrible distortion effect to get the creepy and unsettling sounding outro for the breakdown’s clean section. The breakdown was recorded pretty quickly, with the bridge section taking a solid few hours to get recorded perfectly. Fast forward to 1:30am, the session was over and everyone was more than thankful for that. The plus side of it taking so long was that the roads were clear for Sam, Simon and Kris to drive back to Manchester with Deaf Havana blaring out of the windows on the motorway!

The week after our studio escapades, Alex went back to the studio to record some more vocals and Mitch went back to quickly finish off Growing Backwards and Coming Storm. After an evening with Matt, all the songs were finally completed instrumentally and only needed Alex to finish off the vocals which was done over a few sessions in the coming months.

Not Today Release EP ‘Headway’ on 20th May 2016  

Watch new video ‘Growing Backwards’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7k3LLNToDc

  More Info: https://www.facebook.com/NotTodayUK | https://twitter.com/NotTodayBandUKhttp://nottodayuk.bandcamp.com

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