The band members declined the opportunity because they did not want to work for a major record label and instead signed a recording contract with East London indie label Wichita Recordings, chosen because it did not want to stamp its agenda on the conception of records. Frontman and chief writer Okereke wanted "Silent Alarm" to emphasise the importance of finding pleasure in small mundane things, because "those are the sort of things that can be incredibly touching". The album was born out of "a nagging youthful urgency" and the realisation that responsibility has to be taken for the first time as a young adult. Before recording started, Okereke attended singing lessons to open up his voice. In June 2004, Bloc Party convened at Deltalab Studios in Copenhagen to make "Silent Alarm" with Paul Epworth. The band had already written demo songs to record, but Okereke has noted that "it is a creative process and you have to let yourself be inspired while you're in the studio as well". The Deltalab set-up posed problems, because it included bare mains cables and dated, malfunctioning equipment from the 1960s and 1970s. Bloc Party took three sessions to get acquainted with Epworth's methodology. The producer has called the recording time a "growing process" because Okereke was not wholly comfortable singing in front of people, especially after tonsil problems. Although the band members had preliminary ideas about a track's rhythm, they did not know how songs were going to start or end. Okereke often asked Tong to play something on the drums, which inspired him to mould a track by adding guitar chords to the beat. Bloc Party's priority when recording "Silent Alarm" was "to give the music more depth, sonically speaking" rather than focus on making a punk funk record. The band believed that 21st-century rock music could only survive if people started "mixing styles that aren't supposed to be together". Okereke has suggested that forward-thinking bands reach a plateau and start to question the boundaries of their medium; this leads to experimentation with elements from other genres. Bloc Party set out to explore the idea of merging different styles in the debut album, rather than in later work. "Silent Alarm" was crafted to appeal to R&B, electro, and pop fans, on top of the band's core indie rock fanbase. Okereke wanted the album to sound "very rich and full".