started writing material for Angles

The Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas and guitarist Nick Valensi started writing material for the album in January 2009, intent on entering the studio that February. Julian commented in Rolling Stone that they had completed about three songs that sounded like a mixture of 1970s rock and “music from the future”. On March 31, 2009, the band made an announcement from their MySpace account that announced the end of their “much needed hibernation period” and the commencement of new writing and rehearsing for a fourth full-length album, entitled Angles . This album would be different from the first three due to the fact that the music for the album would also be written by the other four Strokes, rather than Casablancas writing a majority share of the material once again: “It’s supercollaborative, and it sounds different,” said Valensi, “but it has a Strokes vibe to it.” In an NME article, Pharrell Williams expressed interest in producing this upcoming album. This followed the news that Casablancas had collaborated with both Williams and Santigold on ” My Drive Thru “, a track commemorating the 100th anniversary of Converse ‘s Chuck Taylor All-Stars shoe. The song was available as a free download from the official Converse website. The album was due to be released in late 2009, but disagreements about just how ready the songs were to be released forced The Strokes to move the actual release date back. On February 1, 2010, The Strokes announced on their website that the recording of the fourth album was being helmed by producer Joe Chiccarelli . According to Chiccarelli in an interview with HitQuarters , the two parties first met in 2009 and, after finding they shared a similar mind space and similar thoughts on the potential direction of the new record, tried out some tracking. Not long after recording began, however, the band became frustrated with Chiccarelli’s reserved production style. Only one song from these recording sessions, “Life Is Simple in the Moonlight”, remained on the album’s track listing. Inspired, in part, by other contemporary bands like MGMT , Arctic Monkeys , and Crystal Castles , The Strokes decided to experiment with various production techniques, and recorded the rest of the album’s material at Albert Hammond Jr.’s home studio in upstate New York with engineer Gus Oberg .