After seven solo albums, Tempest had begun thinking about working with others, and so the night before the recording session, he and Chatten repaired to Albarn's studio and wrote their verses together, responding to each other. It seemed to work really well, he says: A true collaboration. Nevertheless, he concedes, the actual recording of Flags proved to be quite the baptism of fire.
"Writing has always been the space I go to retreat or to recover from the pain of existence, life, my body in this world and the stuff that was, yeah, really difficult."