The Cinema released their fantastic debut record, My Blood Is Full Of Airplanes, earlier this week, and Matt Malpass and Leighton Antelman have been kind enough to do a Track-By-Track guide to the record with PropertyOfZack. We will be running three segments of the feature beginning today and finishing up next week, so read up on the first three songs and check back in the future!

1. Satellites
Matt: This is a  cool one because it was literally written in 3 different countries, on airplanes, a boat, on the beach and in a cabin, in studio A and studio B of my place. I started off writing the skeleton to the music on my laptop flying to New Zealand via LA, worked on it some while I was in Big Sur, California, then worked on it while I was on a boat in New Zealand, sitting there with headphones on — actually in the bridge if you listen to the background noise it’s a recording of the atmosphere of the boat I was on while I was tracking that section, I just turned on my laptop mic and got the sounds of people walking around. After that I was headed to Tahiti so I got to work on the song on my laptop on the beaches of Tahiti while drinking Hinano, the Tahitian beer.
After I got back home I sent the track to Leighton and he demoed some vocals to it. When he flew back to Atlanta one of the many times during the recording of the record we ended up going to a cabin in the mountains for one session, and that was where we ended up tracking the vocals and some more of the music. Funny thing was after he left we both decided we didn’t like the chorus so Leighton re-wrote the chorus and we tracked those vocals on the last day he was here doing the Lydia mixes months later. It actually almost didn’t get tracked because I was so busy trying to finish the Lydia mix deadline that we had my brother track the new vocals with Leighton in the B room while I mixed Lydia.
I actually didn’t even hear the new vocals till I got around to mixing the song, which was only about 3 weeks ago. I dug the new vocals so much that I re-wrote a lot of the music to the song ANOTHER TIME as I was mixing it. So with all the revisions it took February till August to get this nailed down!

2. The Wolf
Matt: I had been listening to a lot of Lady Gaga when I wrote the first beat to this song. I think this was one of the first 4 songs we did the first time Leighton flew in to try and work some ideas out. Basically the track almost started out as a joke but Leighton was able to salvage it with the lyrics and vocals and we went back and re-worked the music from there. I think this is one of my favorites, I really like the feel of the verses.
Leighton: This was also one if my favorites right out of the gate. I actually wanted to use this one as the first single because I like it so much. But if I’m being honest it’s probably because it leans a little more towards my comfort zone with the whole indie vibe. Ha, I believe this one’s working title was submarine. 
Matt: Yeah, it was Submarine Torpedo!

3. Kill it
Matt: This is probably one of the more simple songs instrumentation-wise. Real drums, piano, and a few backing tracks. I think we were trying to go for something more simple but still powerful and catchy, kind of trying to challenge ourselves to see if we could make a good song without adding tons of layers. I think for me the bridge is my favorite part, maybe of the whole album, where Leighton put the “take one more look at me I’d better be lost in the crowd, just one more night out”, it always gets me. I’m really proud of this one, I think it turned out better than either of us expected.
Leighton: This is the song that I actually forgot about after tracking 10 songs in Atlanta. Little did I know this would be the first single off the album. It was a really simple chorus and song until late one night we were messing around on the keyboard and that I played that hook on the chorus. We both really liked it and it never changed from there. So that part was actually kind of stumbled onto.