lot of technology underneath". This approach was an imperative for American Life. Recorded at three different studios using Ahmadzaï's own gear along with the studio's SSL mixing consoles, the album's recording process was often laborious but was sparse in the musical arrangements of the songs. About the musical composition, Ahmadzaï told to Remix magazine that they "tried to under-produce many tracks to make them sound rougher than the average international pop production. We wanted to do something totally modern and futuristic but not very apparent. You have to be very minimalist and choose every sound very carefully. Some tracks were composed in the big studio; that can be very dangerous because you can lose perspective. But all initial directions of the tracks were made in my home studio." American Life is suffused with Ahmadzaï's characteristic production techniques, like stuttering instruments and vocals, oscillating loop tones recalling 1950s Sonar pulses, morphing vocals consisting of grunts and squeals and treatments that make the music freeze in between rhythms. The producer hoped that using stuttering would become a rage in the future world of recording. He believed that people think it is not natural to skip and stutter the music. But he used it to create a new groove. With the help of Pro Tools, he froze the audio at any point he wanted to change the rhythm of the tracks. Madonna discussed the recording of the title track stating that Ahmadzaï had encouraged her to rap spontaneously, about all the materialistic objects that she herself had been using and doing. They had an instrumental breakdown in "American Life", where the producer encouraged Madonna to add a rap about her everyday life. "Because I was always drinking soy lattes in the studio, and I drive my Mini Cooper to the studio, I was just like, 'OK, let me just talk about the things that I like'. So I went and it was just total improv and obviously it was sloppy at first, but I got out all my thoughts and then I wrote everything down that I said and then I perfected the timing of it. So it was totally spontaneous," she added. For "Hollywood", he used a drum kit and percussion from an E-mu Emulator and also added extra drum sounds to give the song an old, disco vibe. Wanting to have a loud bass synth sound, Ahmadzaï used a Nord Lead