Time again to see what common musical touch points we can find for our third album: a studio recording made in a single day early in ’25 in Cologne. Seven years down the line, the three of us are pretty different, to be honest. But with the friction and tension that come from differing perspectives and musical disagreements comes something valuable: hard-fought compromise and meaningful forward movement, where we constantly find new ground for all three of us (willingly or unwillingly). A lot of that comes down to our eclectic set of references and diverse musical backgrounds.

We’re a live band first and foremost; none of us are studio musicians at heart. We love the risk/ reward of playing material we know just well enough to get through from start to finish. With that in mind, we recorded all in one room, complete takes for the most part (Kit edited some bits for his own amusement). It is what it is. This is what we sound like in the flesh.

Songwriting duties are split between us. Reinier and Kit wrote the bulk, Jonas contributed one tune, and then a couple of covers. One cover of note is Hard Time Killing Floor Blues by Skip James, the legendary Delta blues guitarist and singer. Playing this tune brings out something in Reinier (reluctantly) that he wouldn’t usually go for, and we love that. It’s also such a unique, beautiful, and heavy tune. It grounds everything else on the record. Needless to say, the original is what you should go and listen to.

In terms of composition, Kit and Reinier both share a love of classical music (Kit’s roots on organ began with playing pipe organ for church services). The track Rue Ballu contains quite a bit of harmony borrowed from Lili Boulanger (with a melodic rhythm transcribed from a tune by rapper JID), whereas Kit’s Form of Attack happily rips on Messiaen. This touch of the grandiose (harmonically speaking) is often counterbalanced by the propulsion of Jonas’ rhythmic language, unabashed in its Terry Bozzio reverence.

The Hammond trio lineup is a historical entity unto itself. We fit in there, kind of, but not totally. Kit often plays the Hammond like a church organ, Reinier references the legacy of the guitar across genres and Jonas’ beats lean into the avant-garde and early drum and bass / Squarepusher era. All this grants us considerable freedom in the music, both structurally and aesthetically. If you listen closely to the last track, you can hear a bald eagle screeching in the distance.

A pattern is emerging for this group – the finding of a middle way between differing musical perspectives. We find this to have quite a lot of meaning for us and for the music. We don’t need to make the same musical choices or hear everything in a coherent similar way – we just need to be willing to find a middle way that allows all three of us to express ourselves individually. By doing this, the band naturally expresses itself as a whole also, as it rumbles on in a forward direction. Sometimes it is precisely in these areas of musical conflict that the most interesting events occur, and it’s in these moments where the band has to grow a little to accommodate new ideas and directions. Not to sound too self-aggrandising about this though, as what we are talking about here is not a new idea by any means... but it is a current truth about ourselves that we as a band are learning to embrace.