One line to describe working with each artist: 
Dap Kings: Scary, but a hell of a lot of fun playing with some of the raddest musicians around  
John Taylor: incredibly inspiring. We knew it was going to be good, but jamming with John and Alex Greenwald was one of the best feelings we had ever experienced  
Sean Lennon: Sean’s day was crazy. We had so much fun and watching a song form in his mind was an incredible experience. Additionally doing lyrics at his pad afterwards was just sublime.  
Nick Hodgson: We were a bit spent that day, but we had a great time jamming with Nick on the song he brought in. He had a very contagious energy 
Santigold: The perfect capper to a perfect week. She was super cool and I would love to hold onto the short vocal takes she recorded to sample later.

Dear Diary:

The first week in New York was a multi-sensory experience that was not unlike making love for the first time in a tub of candyfloss and synthesizers, with fireworks spraying out of the lighting above. It was just surreal and incredibly fast paced, but all good things.

Initially it was pretty daunting, but once we settled in, it felt like we were working with long lost Danimals.  
 
We had to get used to the whole ‘studio drop in’ thing. Albert Hammond Jr rocked up with Sean Lennon, I nearly lost my cool, seeing as we are all Strokes heads. He was pretty quiet during the sessions, but he would play some lines that were incredibly Albert-like, and you definitely felt like you were in the room with someone amazing. Robbie Furze from the Big Pink also showed up which was pretty cool. 

 
The most surreal experience we had was writing a song about a marmoset at Sean’s amazing home studio whilst drinking the best lemon ginger tea I’ve ever had.

We were all very psyched to work with Santigold, she is so ridiculously creative, the melodies that she pulled out were like nothing I’ve ever heard, but completely hers.

Santi picked up on a jam structure that we had created on Tuesday with John Taylor & Alex Greenwald. Pretty much immediately, she had pulled out an astonishing melody from the song that only Santigold could have possibly have heard. Really unique & individual - it was so exciting to hear her voice played back over the structure of our demos.  

After the session, we ducked out to the East Village where Ronson has a regular Friday-night radio show, on East Village Radio. He literally DJs in a funny little glass booth right on Avenue A, so it's weird to see pedestrians walking past on Friday night going out, and there's Mark Ronson DJing on the pavement. He ended up playing two Danimals tracks - Koi Moon's Daughter and Firework Spraying Moon - right near the close of his set. A first! Danimals on NYC Radio.

After dinner, Ronson invited us to go out to see his DJ set at Santos Party House, which is a big party house on Lafayette (and co-owned by Andrew WK). He was going back-to-back with one of our heroes, Q-Tip. We arrived to stand in the queue for the club, and after trying to explain to the door guy who we were, Q-Tip himself walked in and nodded us through the line. After a while, Ronson arrived with his records and the two were playing a mad hip hop party set, cumulating in a the announcement of our dreams - Q-Tip emceeing over one break: 'Shout out to the Danimals!'... NUTS!!  

Person with the most annoying habit in the studio/flat:

Moses keeps showing us his Biggie shirt he bought from a vintage shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Not really annoying though, because it's Biggie. Go Mo.  

Artist you worked with you’d most likely introduce your mum to:

John Taylor - he's a dude and your Mum is likely to have had a crush on him in the 80's anyway.  

Best quote from the whole experience – could be from anyone:

"My Mum is secondary to Madlib ..." - Anonymous (for fear of disownment).  

Most nervous:

I think all of the band were really nervous. It really hit home in the cab on the way to the studio to play with the Dap Kings on the first day.

Best traveller:

Jaie is pretty much locked down to the NYC vibe, and has ingenious ways of beating traffic, jet lag and finding record stores.  
 
Messiest:

We are all pretty clean, but after sleeping through our maid service in the apartment for 5 consecutive days ensured that a post-apocalyptic wonderland was created.  

Last to bed:

Will, without a doubt. He has enough energy to shake a cat out of a tree with a sparking flare from a continent away.  

First to rise:

Jonti wakes up pretty early to make himself almond butter & honey toast, and due to the time difference between Sydney & NYC, our manager Blake wakes up to answer his 10,000,000 emails.  

Weirdest food:

Almond butter? We found out that salmon & cream cheese bagels are called 'Bagels with Lox'. Weird name.  

Best purchase:

Collectively, I think we've purchased about 50-60 12" records from various stores in Brooklyn & the East Village, and there's going to be some gold in there. Jonti bought a Polyevolver Synth which is pretty sweet. Everyone is going to buy Stylophones, which are these little synths from the 1950s or 1960s that you play with a pen attached to the unit, that can carry with you on the bus or when tobogganing in the swiss alps, should you find yourself wanting to compose melody lines whilst rocketing down a mountain.

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Danimals are the winners of the Tooheys Extra Dry: The Lab competition and got to write and record a track in New York with Mark Ronson in his studio with Santigold, Nick Hodgson of Kaiser Chiefs, Sean Lennon, John Taylor of Duran Duran and members of The Dap-Kings.

The final track, will feature as the soundtrack for Tooheys Extra Dry’s next national advertising campaign, and the winner’s journey will be filmed from start to finish – resulting in a fly-on-the-wall documentary for release in March 2010. Check out www.tedthelab.com for more information.