Winter is here! And so are Modern Day Chicane.

This was the scene at Xaudia studio yesterday - a beautiful cold, crisp and bright day in North Yorkshire, and it's times like this you really appreciate the peace & tranquility we get here. Ideal for creativity and recording. And this was the view from the studio over the surrounding fields.

We're a little isolated, not quite in the middle of nowhere, but certainly just down the road from the middle. They don't grit the road here, and sometimes the pipes freeze, but yesterday everything was perfect.

Modern Day Chicane were here to record some drum tracks for a future EP, in what turned out to be a productive, if somewhat frantic session. I arrived early to mic up the kit as drummer Pete was coming up from London on the train, which of course arrived a little late due to the weather, which left us about 4 hours to get the drum takes. We tracked at a blistering pace, cutting six live versions that may (or may not) see the light of day as bonus tracks, then we did five of the songs again to a click track, with Ryan and Nicola (pictured) in the control room providing guide vocals, guitar and bass.

Once we had a couple of decent takes of each drum track, we abandoned the editing and packed up early because it was getting cold and dark, and the talent had to get to a gig. It had already dropped to -4︒C by the time we had to scrape the ice from the cars. Brrr!

I went home and lit the fire!