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 Herway.

This episode contains explicit language.

Alt J formed in Leeds, England in 2007.

Their debut album won a Mercury Prize and their second album was nominated for a Grammy.

Their third album, Relaxer, came out in June 2017.

In this episode, they break down in cold blood from that album.

It's a song they'd written years earlier, but when they tried to record it, they couldn't get it right.

The problem was the tempo.

Coming up, you'll hear how they solved it and more.

It's Alt J on Song Exploder.

I'm Joe from Alt J.

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 Leeds University.

That was when 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 your football and you're hitting it back.

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