Is This IT - Recording and Production

Recording and Production

After the deal with RCA, The Strokes started working with Gil Norton, who had produced recordings for alternative rock group Pixies. Although a rapport developed between the two parties, the band remained unhappy at the results of preliminary sessions which sounded "too clean" and "too pretentious"; the three songs recorded with Norton were scrapped. Like The Modern Age, Is This It was eventually recorded with Gordon Raphael at Transporterraum in Manhattan's East Village in New York City. The studio is located in a basement with poor lighting, but despite its poor infrastructure, it includes modern Pro Tools Digital Audio Workstation hardware. The Strokes liked Raphael's lack of ego and formed a good collaborative relationship with the producer.

"I just wanted to write music that could touch people. a songwriter, you play a few chords and sing a melody that's been done a thousand times, and now you're a singer-songwriter. I think it takes a little more than that to do something that matters. And I wish I could write a song where all the parts work. When you hear a song like that, it's like finding a new friend."

Before recording started, both parties organized a listening session with the musical material Hammond and Casablancas had brought to show the tone and energy they liked. One of the prerequisites mentioned at the meeting was to take what was happening in music at the time, and go in a completely different direction. Casablancas wanted Is This It to sound like "a band from the past that took a time trip into the future to make their record". The approach for the album became more studied than that of The Modern Age. The group wanted the majority of songs to sound like them playing live, while they requested a few others to be like "a weird, in-studio production with a drum machine, even though no drum machine was used". The songs of the latter type were done track-by-track and were crafted into non-standard rock arrangements. Raphael's background in industrial music played a large part in the album's conception.

During six weeks in the studio, The Strokes' gritty sound became the emphasis of the sessions. The band usually recorded songs only once, based on Casablancas's preference for "raw efficiency". RAT effects pedals and overdriving amplifiers were used at times, "taking sounds, disintegrating them and then bringing them back". The band wanted things to be only slightly stressed, with no heavy-handedness in terms of studio effects; only distortion and reverse echo were widely used. Throughout the process, Raphael improvised off the reactions that he got from the group. At one point, he had to cope with the threat of eviction from his Transporterraum studio, but once The Strokes received backing from RCA, time and money were no longer pressing concerns. The label's A&R delegate initially did not like what had been recorded and felt that the album was not going to be professional enough. The producer and the band were given complete control only when Casablancas persuaded the delegate by playing him some of the new material on a boom box.

Inspired by The Velvet Underground's production and the direct approach of punk rock band Ramones, the miking scheme for the drum kit included only three microphones: one above it, one for the bass drum, and one in the corner of the studio. It was crafted to capture "a compressed, explosive sound". On Moretti's advice, the transfer from the two loud guitars and the rumble of the bass picked up by the drum-kit microphones was not eliminated. The guitars were recorded more simply; Hammond and Valensi both used Fender DeVille amps on opposite sides of the room, while Raphael positioned a mic on each. The sound was then fed directly into a preamp with no equalization. Valensi commented that guitar teacher and mentor Bowersock was invaluable because he was articulating things to the producer that the group could not. While the rest of The Strokes played to a click track, Casablancas sang through a small Peavey practice amp to retain a sense of low fidelity on the album. Raphael mixed as he went along to maintain control of the record until the final mastering stage; the producer aimed to show The Strokes a final product as soon as the band finished performing a track.