Engineering the Sound: The Strokes – Is This It

In 2001 The Strokes single-handedly saved rock 'n' roll with their debut LP. Here's how it was made.

At the turn of the new millennium, the climate of the music charts were rather erratic. Nu-metal was solidifying itself, with Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park and Papa Roach climbing up the charts; gangster rap was making commercial ground; while conversely, boy-bands like N*Sync and Backstreet Boys were selling out arenas and making millions of teenage girls squeal profusely. Hardly the ideal climate for an album like Is This It.

By all accounts it’s seemed as though garage rock was dead, being slowly substituted for turntables, programmed beats and sugary pop. But one five-piece band sought to change this.

In early 2001, The Strokes released their debut EP, The Modern Age, to a rapturous response. Though barely ten minutes long, the three track extended play caused shockwaves in the music scene, catapulting the band into the music press machine and ultimately piquing the interests of record executives a plethora of label giants.

What followed next was the largest bidding war in recent years for a rock band. Finally, after weeks of speculation and a sold-out UK tour, The Strokes signed to RCA in March 2001. Now began the mammoth task for the five-piece: writing and recording a debut album that could live up to the hype of their debut.

Initial sessions for the album began immediately after signing with RCA, opting to work with producer Gil Norton, who’d previously worked for The Pixies and Foo Fighters. Though the two parties got along well, the sessions with Norton were scrapped as they were deemed “too pretentious” and “too clean” by the band.

As a result, The Strokes chose to work with Gordon Raphael - who worked with the band on The Modern Age - at the Transporterraum in Manhattan. Though the studio was basically a poorly lit basement, it was there that for six weeks, the NYC band wrote and recorded the best rock album of the 2000’s, and one of the most revered of all time.

As recording sessions began, singer and primary songwriter Julian Casablancas detailed his unusual goal for their debut LP. Casablancas wanted the album to sound like “a band from the past that took a time trip into the future to make their record”. He wanted the album to sound aged and worn, yet still set itself apart from their modern contemporaries.

The overall approach for Raphael was to make the album as authentic as possible. The band wanted Is This It to sound like a band playing live, and in stark contrast to other acts at the time, they wanted to make the album with few overdubs and minimal use of studio effects.

To intill this vision of grittiness and tenacity, the band spending days practicing the same song over and over until they got a live take with every band member sounding impeccable. Casablancas favoured “raw efficiency”, and as such, most songs were recorded in one take, with Raphael improvising as he went along, going off the band members’ facial expressions for cues.

In an interview with Sound On Sound, Raphael said of the production process: “They couldn’t tell me that they wanted the voice brighter and it wasn’t making them happy. They would just have big frowns on their faces and I would start turning the knobs on every piece of equipment until the frowns began turning into smiles. That was the technique for working with The Strokes.”

Taking cues from their heroes The Velvet Underground and opting for a decidedly 'punk' approach, the process for recording the drums was rather simple. The miking set-up consisted of only three microphones: one for the bass drum, one placed above the kit and the final mic nestled in the corner of the studio.

This set up was done by Raphael to craft an explosive and volatile drum kit, and at the behest of drummer Fab Moretti, Raphael kept the rumbles of the guitars and bass picked up by the drum mics in the final product.

In contrast to the live sound the band was going for, some tracks were specifically designed, upon the band’s request, to sound as though a drum machine was used, even though none were present during the recording. This is most evident in Hard To Explain, where Raphael employed his experience in industrial music production, and a heavy helping of dynamic range compression, to sculpt the acoustic drum kit into creating a near-mechanical sound - or as he put it: “destroying sounds – taking sounds, disintegrating them and bringing them back.”

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