Alex Turner with Judan Suki at Sheffield's 2fly Studios, Turner asked Alan Smyth if he would produce an Arctic Monkeys demo. Smyth obliged and "thought they definitely had something special going on. I told Alex off for singing in an American voice at that first session." An introduction by Smyth led to the band acquiring a management team, Geoff Barradale and Ian McAndrew. They paid for Arctic Monkeys to record numerous three-song demos in 2003 and 2004. Barradale drove the band around venues in Scotland, the Midlands, and the north of England to establish their reputation as a live band. They handed
Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino father at the age of eight, commenting that he "never thought [his father's influence] would find its way into [his] compositions as much as it has on this record". Many of the vocal takes included on the finished album originate from Turner's home demos on a TASCAM 388 8-track recording machine. Guitarist Jamie Cook commented that he "was blown away by the direction Alex had gone in" when Turner played him the demos in February 2017. Initially unsure how they would record the songs, Cook suggested Turner release it as a solo album, but Turner was uninterested. Cook began recording