The Strokes: watch "In Transit Part II", the mini-documentary on the new album "Reality Awaits"

To mark the release of "Reality Awaits", which arrived after several delays, the Strokes have released "In Transit Part II", a roughly ten-minute mini-documentary offering a behind-the-scenes look at the recording sessions for the new album. Directed by Johann Rashid, who also created the album's artwork, the film follows the band to Costa Rica, where they worked on the new material alongside Rick Rubin.
The footage was shot at the mountaintop house chosen as headquarters for the recordings. The documentary alternates between studio sessions and everyday moments — pool dips, games of football, and conversations about songs still in progress — offering an informal glimpse into the creative process and into the relationship between the Strokes and Rubin.

Among the most curious scenes is the one where Julian Casablancas, kneeling before the producer, jokingly asks him: "Are you the person we're looking for?". A moment that captures the relaxed atmosphere of the sessions, which Rubin had already talked about back in 2022 on Joe Rogan's podcast. "We rented a house on top of a mountain and set everything up outside, so when they played it was like they were performing a concert for the ocean from the top of a peak," the producer had recounted, describing a particularly intense experience for the band.

"In Transit Part II" now shows that setting from the inside, steering clear of the usual rhetoric of the creative retreat and instead favoring an everyday account of the record's making. The title explicitly echoes "In Transit", the mini-documentary made in 2001 around the time of "Is This It", when the Strokes had just exploded onto the international scene and had quickly been cast as rock'n'roll's new saviors. More than twenty years on, the band revisits that formula to document a very different moment in their history.
"Reality Awaits" was preceded by the singles "Falling Out Of Love" and "Going Shopping".

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