You Know The Drill - In The Studio For 'Losing Streak'

Birmingham pop punk quintet You Know The Drill recently released their debut EP, Losing Streak. It is available digitally and physically via Scylla Records. They recently shared a track by track for the EP and an artwork feature. Today they are taking us inside the studio for when they were recording the EP. Read below.

"Vocalist Benji Yapp explains of the newly released EP’s title: “We felt it was relevant - it relates to the hard times in life that everyone goes through, where it just seems to be one bad thing after another.” But You Know The Drill aren’t all doom and gloom, the band – completed by Damo Darby on Bass, Brad Potter on Drums and guitarists Jim McCormack & Luke Astley – have a simple mantra: “if it isn’t fun then what’s the point?”. The EP is batting for the rafters, with their energy laden guitar and drum attack and vocal hooks left, right and centre, on their big-room-ready choruses. Following the EP’s release on the 28th October, Yapp discusses the creation of it, as we go into the studio…

We started recording Losing Streak on the 28th of March in Steel City Studio in Sheffield with the almighty Drew Lawson for a solid 10 days. The decision to record with Drew again was based on how happy we were with his work on a previous couple of songs from the year before, so we knew we'd be receiving quality tracks by working with him again. We went into the studio with 5 songs, a couple of which were near enough finished and a couple which still needed a little more work, but that is what the first five days spent there were for; to refine the songs and get them to a fully finished composition, ready to track. For this stage of the process we were even lucky enough to have Alex Adam from ROAM about to help input some ideas and generally overlook the pre-production process.

Our accommodation in Sheffield was a small two bedroom cottage out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded purely by forestry and open land. We would be in the studio all day long, barely leaving the small live room for fresh air, so finishing up and travelling back to our place out in the open at the end of everyday was great. One of my fondest memories from recording is of being in the cottage late at night finishing up the lyrics for one of the tracks with Alex, it felt as far away from real life as possible and I loved it.

When we first went in, '411' was essentially an easycore jam known as "Gamechanger", although upon entering the studio we quickly realised it didn't gel well with the rest of the songs, so between the 5 of us we managed to give it a makeover into the hoppy classic it is today!

When tracking the drums Drew managed to get his hands on a real nice snare drum off his mate, which also happened to be the same snare that was used on Bullet For My Valentine's album 'Venom', although we were sent on the mission of going out and buying fresh skins for it. Drew told us there was a drum shop just around the corner but somehow Brad managed to get the wrong address and ended up spending 45 minutes on the motorway. Luckily we realised before we got any further and managed to find the shop, which literally was within walking distance from the studio.

The most experimental technique we used when tracking guitars was on a small riff in the bridge section of the third track 'Heads Up'. Drew wanted it to be played using harmonics on the strings, but to hit the right notes Drew had to tune the string down and back up using the tuning pegs while recording. It took ages before Jim and Drew got it perfect but it sounded amazing in the end!

The final day of recording was spent solely on my vocals and boy did I get worked hard. It's probably worth mentioning that a few days prior I somehow managed to lose my bank card - I personally think I left it in the card reader at the self-service checkout in Tesco - so my food and drink for that day was very minimal. Half way through the day my voice very slowly started to get a little sore, so Drew made me this mug of lukewarm water with a Lemsip in it which tasted absolutely disgusting, but it eased the pain so I couldn't knock it. The last track I recorded was 'Repose', so by this point my voice had become somewhat scratchy and gritty from a day’s worth of tracking, but conveniently this definitely added to the track as the grit in my voice fit perfectly with the angsty and hard tone.

One of the most magical moments during tracking was when Jim was tracking his leads for 'Repose', as he was just twiddling in between takes over a certain section and stumbled across a stunning harmony which fit so well on top of what we already had. For me personally, I know that I am so happy with how well the record came out and everyone involved absolutely killed it. I'm super proud of what we accomplished and it was definitely one of the best experiences of my life!"