You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishikesh Hirway. I'm Joe from Alt-J and I sing and play guitar. I'm Gus, I play the keyboards. The first memory I have of the early writings for in Cold Blood, that was in Lee's University, that was when we were in the 80s.
We were in college 2009. I was basically just at the front room of this shared house. I kind of wait till the house is empty and there's no distractions. I just had this guitar riff that I was working on. Often with Gus when I write a guitar part, you react quite quickly to what I'm doing. It's almost like a rally. It's as quick as me serving you in the pool and you're hitting it back.
I do remember writing the keyboard part very quickly. I bought this casiotone 405 from eBay for £1 and £5. It's like an amazing deal, you know, ludicrous. What I really love about the casiotone is it's got a really warm, kind of old sound because it's made in the early 80s. It's not a synthesizer, it's a basic keyboard really with about 24 sounds.
I particularly love that organ sound that I use that. I think it's the pipe organ sound. I mean, it sounds nothing like a pipe organist, but it's just great in its own way. Which then Tom drums to. Tom's minimalist approach to drums was one of the things that give all the joy quite a recognisable sound maybe. It didn't need a grand drum kit to create great beats.
When it was setting up the band and we were playing in Guil or Algataris bedroom, Tom was gradually bringing in piece after piece of percussion every week, go home for his Sunday lunch with his dad. And then he'd come back with a different drum. So he was building this kit piece of me in Guil's bedroom. And so first he brought the snare drum and then he brought the kick drum and then he brought cowbells.
He didn't want to bring his tom so he brought his bongos and started hitting him with sticks. There's some cowbell in there as well. We're not like a music school band and had we been a music school band, we probably would have booked a practice room and there would have been a full drum kit with all the rack tombs and floor tombs and cymbals and high-hat and whatever. But because when we started out we were doing it in a DIY way, that became our drum sound.
For the years that we had this song and didn't record it, we occasionally just break it out in a soundtrack or something. But we were naturally slowing up and speeding down. When we were playing it without a click, you know, just jamming it together. Like why does the verse seem to want to be like a hundred? And the chorus just really wants to be 105. Usually when that happens you can find a tempo that's acceptable for the whole song.
Let's just do it at 103, come on. For some reason it just didn't work. So in this case we decided to change the tempo in the different sections. I remember being in the studio with Charlie Andrew, our producer, and we had to do a number of takes to go through each section to find the right tempo. So once we acknowledge that, then the song worked. So that was a real breakthrough actually, was figuring out the tempo.
So once we had the intro, guitar, and casted anything going on, then it goes quite quickly into another section, like slowed down sort of bluesy section. That was the moment where I remember thinking we're onto something here, because you were doing some really cool things with the keyboard. I have another really basic keyboard, it's a Yamaha, it's basically a second keyboard that secondary schools buy in bulk and put them in like music rooms.
So it's got about a hundred sounds, again the whole orchestra is on there. So I think also using the trumpet setting on this, and we really liked the sound actually, because it sounded so fake but so good. We sent over a version with the Yamaha brass, and I think it might have in the head of our label came in and was like, we should use real brass on this.
But we all kind of convinced ourselves that actually the Yamaha brass sounded really great, and we didn't need real brass, but then we had this day booked the Abbey Road to do strings. So as we had that rum booked, it made sense to get a little brass section to come in and just quickly knock the encode blood brass part out and half an hour, and we'll just see how it sounds.
I think once we even heard them just rehearsing it before we even turned on the tape, it was just like, wow, this is amazing, this is obviously going to sound absolutely incredible. The whole total convince them. They give that section a really kind of like ominous, sinister presence. With this song, essentially the story is a guy jumps into a pool, he's at a pool party, everyone's having a good time, they're all bros, and big eggs, howling, six packs, your classic pool party.
And a guy jumps in, the time he resurfaces, someone's been stabbed. I pull some of some of those some of our kids in gold blood. There seems to have been an all J fascination with pool parties. It seems to keep popping up the pool party.
I don't know, because we're not particularly big pool parties. No, no, no, no, growing up in England, I don't know, you watched a lot of American TV and films and stuff, and they always seem to involve pool party when you're watching like American pie or some of these films that we're watching growing up. Or like the OC or something. Yeah, exactly. You're watching these programs and you're like, of course, every episode they have a pool party.
You're kind of half like fascinated and jealous, and you have a new half think it's just like ridiculous. Like, oh, yeah, there's a pool party, there's the guy with the cake, you know. Token pool party coming up. Yeah, yeah. So that's the genuine idea. Often I will fill space using my voice, but I'm in a booth on my own and no one's looking at me. I can kind of like act out of character, maybe.
Doing some justice by making an attempt to add something extra that I could work, but I do it on my own when no one's looking because I can idea doing it. Incomplan. Incomplan. We did a lot of takes and Charlie Andrew was just basically like, I don't know which one I like. And so we were like, well, why don't we just use them all? At the end of the song, there's a very simple synth lead which again comes from my Yamaha, my sort of school keyboard.
So it's me playing it, but it's kind of up-editated in its structure, but I did experiment with using an up-edgator on a real synth, but it sounded too perfect. I think it's the fact that it's not quite perfect, it's what makes it good. I always really enjoyed playing that part, but it's hard because it really knackers my arm, like I'm doing it live now. It's a real punisher, but it is worth it. And then the key change as well at the end.
And it just really sounded cool over the top of the brass. You, Joe, I think you just sort of thought that we just needed one more thing to happen, really, didn't we? Yeah, just something to finish it off. We haven't had a song that I can't change until I felt like this was the song to get that emotional. It's the final push as Nathan, you want to have a big exit. We do like using sound effects in songs, I think that they just glil-gap fillers.
So there's a big woo between verse one and verse two. Woo! That was the London cheerleaders. London cheerleaders, I think, yeah. There are a bunch of cheerleaders, literal, real cheerleaders. And just for higher, I don't know. I don't know if they have a particular team. No, I think they do. I think we just grew up called London cheerleaders. Yeah. There was a group called the London cheerleaders. So that is the sound of like somebody diving off a diving board and then making a big splash.
We initially actually used a library sample for that. Online, there's sort of like various uncopyrighted sound effects you can download. But finally, at the last minute, the label got cold feet about what was the actual legal status of these sound effects. So there was a very panicked day where Charlie, a producer, had to recreate all these sound effects. And I don't know how he did that. But he built a springboard.
I think what happened was there was some construction work going on outside the studio. And he found a big bit of plywood. And he put two of them together. So they had some sort of like almost like rigidity to it. And then just sprung it and it made the right sounding noise with a springboard. And then with the splash, he just said he threw a stone in the pond. Something like that. I don't know, we've always just done it when it comes to recording.
Just kind of like when you finish a piece of work and then you put stickers all over it. Just like, you know, make it look extra pretty. Just feel it. It's the belly in the curry. Yeah, yeah. Do you have bay leaves in curry? Yes, but curry leaves in curry. Yes. Sure. There you go. And now here's in cold blood by Alt J in its entirety. And then with the splash, he just said he threw a stone in the pond. And then with the splash, he just said he threw a stone in the pond.
And then with the splash, he just said he threw a stone in the pond. And then with the splash, he just said he threw a stone in the pond. And then with the splash, he just said he threw a stone in the pond. And then with the splash, he just said he threw a stone in the pond. So fucking loud, messed up. And then with the splash, he just said he threw a stone in the pond. And then with the splash, he just said he threw a stone in the pond.
And then with the splash, he just said he threw a stone in the pond. And then with the splash, he just said he threw a stone in the pond. And then with the splash, he just said he threw a stone in the pond. And then with the splash, he just said he threw a stone in the pond. And then with the splash, he just said he threw a stone in the pond. And then with the splash, he just said he threw a stone in the pond. And then with the splash, he just said he threw a stone in the pond.
And then with the splash, he just said he threw a stone in the pond. And then with the splash, he just said he threw a stone in the pond. Visit songexploder.net for link to buy this track and to watch the music video for in cold blood. This episode is sponsored by Squarespace and all in one platform where you can make a website that's beautiful and effective. I used Squarespace a lot. Most recently I used it for the website for book exploder, which you can check out at bookexploder.com.
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