STUDIO DIARY: Behind The Scenes Of Noah Dillon's New Album 'Kill The Dove'

This photo was shot during a take of the Love Me As I Am chorus. We really wanted this song to feel like an early 2000’s banger, something that Phoenix would make. We kept the vocals dry and stacked on each other letting the guitar do lots of the work. I pushed myself really hard vocally on this record. Andy (our producer) has such a good ear for melody and harmony and is always pushing me to find the vocal take that brings out the most emotion. I really like the character of voices over the technical ability, we really focus on bringing out the tone and feeling of the take over the take with the better pitching or technique.  

Me and Andy stewing over the guitar tone for Drifting Apart. We wanted the song to grow in the second verse without losing its clarity and rhythm. We plugged my guitar into the compressors and cranked it till the tone was as dirty as possible. We then put a hard tremolo on so it pulsed to the rhythm of the song. In this photo I am tracking those big distorted chords in the second verse.

Our lead guitarist Sam Rocchi getting in the tone zone on Drip Dry. I wrote the melody for this riff on the toilet one day, I just had the melody in my head and recorded it on a voice memo. I wanted the song to have a soft delicate pre-chorus and then a huge melodic chorus. To achieve this with the melody sam overdubbed 5-6 guitar takes using different fuzz and octave tones to play the riff.

Me and griff running through Love Me as I Am. We worked really hard on the melodic structure on this song and Griff did such a good job at making the bass part pop. We spent hours trying different vibes and rhythms for this song and always ended up with the line that we first played when we ran through it like you see in the photo

Sam and Andy talking about the lead line for the chorus of All My Love Has Gone Away. I had written a lead line in the demo that we really liked but when we tried to put it into the studio recording it sounded out of place. This happens with lots of parts because the direction of the song changes from the demo to the studio version. It often takes a few brains and a bit of  time to try a whole bunch of different ideas for the best lead line. Andy has lots of pedals and effects in his studio which is so fun and helpful for painting the sonic image we want, but It can also lead to having so many options that we spend all day trying new sounds. Most of the time we end up going with the first sound/part we went for but sometimes there will be a magic sound or part that can change the song.

Stream or purchase the new album on the 19th of August here