BTNUK EXCLUSIVE: Youth Killed It Discuss The Recording Of ‘What’s So Great, Britain?’
Youth Killed It’s sophomore record What’s So Great, Britain? saw release via Rude Records on the 5th October.
“Everything I’ve experienced over the last 14 months led to the creation of this record,” explains vocalist Jack Murphy. “Things that affect and impact the life of someone in their 20’s – from society to relationships. It’s been a mad 18 months for Britain and my personal life in general, so I really put my heart on my sleeve with this one.”
Guitarist Carlos Montero talks to us about the recording process:
“It was a brisk February morning when Jack and myself sat down at the control desk at Crystal Sound Studios. The demos were prepared and we’d loaded up all our guide tracks on the monitor in front of us. We’ve always recorded here, it’s Jack’s studio and always feels like home. It’s quite a cathartic process and most of that stems from not having time constraints or pressure being applied on us.
Like I said, we had everything ready to start the full recording process. Having spent the last year preparing demos meant going in without any false starts. No drama.
The first day, like always was spent setting up the live room for the drums. We’re particular when it comes to getting the right drum sound. Definitely not weird, we know bands will sometimes spend a week moving drums into bathrooms and attics to try out different acoustics. We didn’t have that much time unfortunately but we did nail the drum sound we wanted and with that, Ben our drummer sat at his stool and 6 hours later our drum parts were recorded. We worked on some overdubs and any changes necessary and that was the first day done.
Day two was spent tracking all the bass parts and guitar for the first two songs, this was done by our best boy Thexton, the man of very few words and 4 strings, once again we spent around 30 minutes fine tuning the sound, trying different mic distances and combinations with DIs until we got exactly what we wanted, a dirty hard hitting bass tone.
Day three and four were all rhythm guitar and guitar overdubs and any other added sauce such as effects, layering and other tidbits. Once that was finished we started work on the lead guitars. This was a pretty interesting part of the recording process because jack will normally build a full song and then we’ll record it like that but this time we ended up experimenting with certain sections and changing lead lines. It was actually at this stage that we rebuilt a whole song and also how we ended up making another song sound different melodically, it was an interesting and new way of doing things for us but it worked out great, one example was the decision to add a slide guitar part to 0121 and This Sounds Cliche, unfortunately we didn’t have a slide so we improvised and used a lightbulb instead, I remember watching a slide player in Spain using a whiskey tumbler so anything is possible.
Finally on the weekend we worked on the vocals, harmonies and again overdubs. Once again the beginning of he day was dedicated to working on the sound, mic choice and positioning. The harmonies were fun to record and we got to be pretty experimental in what we were adding to the main vocal lines. We chalk this down to not being held back by time and money limits. When you’re free to work it’s incredible what can just flow out!
We’re absolutely in love with this record, it’s hard not to be when you put a piece of yourself in it, you give up your time and expend energy to crate this noise. It really is a part of you and we’re so proud of it.”
What’s So Great, Britain? is out now via Rude Records, available to purchase HERE.
