Recording and Production
Pushing the Senses contains music in the same rock styles featured on Feeder's 2002 album Comfort in Sound, but it focuses more on pianos, rather than a string orchestra. Only "Pain on Pain" on the album mainly used strings, including samples from a mellotron. Frontman Grant Nicholas said he did not think the album needed them. He also called the album the band's "Recovery album" as he felt he was more at ease writing the songs than he was with Comfort in Sound, after the loss of their drummer Jon Lee, alongside stating that he was inspired by artists such as John Lennon within the piano playing and writing the songs. Grant told Kerrang! in May 2004, "I've done some recording on my own in a little studio up by where I live in North London. I demo the album in its full form before the rest of the band play on it. Its difficult to know at this stage what it will turn out like, but so far its slightly more mature sounding". Grant later added "Each album is a journey and a reflection of the past, there is some stuff that touches on what has happened, but there are songs about love, songs of loss and songs about the future. I don't want to give too much away but there's one track called "Bitter Glass". Its quite dark but uplifting too. Its about pulling yourself out of a big hole".
Feeder and Gil Norton recorded the bulk of Pushing the Senses in 2004 at Abbey Road Studios, London, England. Ken Nelson recorded "Frequency" in Liverpool with the band, as Grant felt he could capture the organic sound. Grant recorded the piano first with the rest of the track built around it. Grant said the album as a whole does have a retro sound to it, but the band did not want it to "sound too retro". The title track was one of the first songs Grant wrote for the album in 2003, and was at first written on a piano before being translated to guitar, and also said that he could have easily recorded the song with strings. "Tumble and Fall", which became the album's first single, saw Grant describe the recording process as "old fashioned", with bass player Taka Hirose saying that the band should include it on the album. The song was recorded with the vocal and an acoustic guitar at first, and then the other parts of the music built around it.
In an interview with the band's official website Feederweb, Grant explained that "Feeling a Moment", was played back with the intro playing backwards, in which he explained: "This was one of the first songs written for the album. I actually started recording that song in the studio on my own at the Crypt. The song was written at home, as soon as I had that intro, the vocal “woo who” bit—what ever you want to call it—that was a really important hook for the song." In a DVD packaged with limited quantities of the album, Grant is seen playing a piano during the recording sessions, and once said that " don't rate himself as a piano player". He also stated that Feeder are a band, and even though he writes all the songs, he makes sure drummer Mark Richardson and bass player Taka Hirose have their say in the process of their creation.
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