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 from their MySpace account, the band 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 in that it would feature music written by the other four Strokes, rather than Casablancas writing ninety-five percent of the material 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 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 site. The album was due to be released in late 2009, but disagreements about the songs' readiness forced the Strokes to scale back this date. On February 1, 2010, the Strokes announced on their website that the recording of the fourth album was being helmed by award-winning Producer Joe Chiccarelli. According to Chiccarelli in an interview with HitQuarters, the two camps 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 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 award-winning Engineer Gus Oberg.