Building the breakdown

Robbie adds some percussion sounds to help the track keep its rhythmic feel during the breakdown. “The song is insanely percussion- and groove-based,” he tells us. “Usually what I’ll do is distort an 808 or something for the breakdowns, but in this case I couldn’t get it right, so what I’ve done is duplicated the track, distorted one and filtered and EQed the other, just so I could get it to sit right.”