29/09/2023
Get on yr knees & open wide; our new album “HUNGER” is out today!
Perfectly represented by the bow and arrow, there has been a lot of tension in the making of this record, now finally a release. I started writing some of these songs around the same time of the making of our 2021 EP but the process was stalled over and over by mental health issues, chronic pain and scrambling for survival post-pandemic… It was already late into 2022 when things finally started to take shape at rehearsals and we locked into a momentum of productivity - just to be thwarted by me having to have emergency neck surgery, an extruded disc was crushing a nerve going out my arm and into my left hand.
We postponed recording and then while in recovery we wrapped up pre-production and entered the studio. I spent mornings in physio therapy and the afternoons recording. To this day I can still not feel my arm 100%, but we pushed through. What you hear are live takes, bar a few leads. We produced ourselves, with the great engineering of our friend Torben Utecht. We played on our own amps and drums, in a studio in our home city of Berlin. Uno and Liv are not only playing their hearts out but they also conjured vocal takes from me that I didn’t think I had in me. It was intense and focused days. I also feel it’s by far the most ”together” we have worked on an album. Drums and bass are taking a centre role both sonically and in arrangements on many of the tracks. We were prepared and it paid off. It was mixed remotely and in only four days by Ben Greenberg who gave it a fantastic sound, in that glorious space on the border of our comfort zone. Carl Saff sealed the deal with his mastering touch.
Writing-wise, I thought more in terms of full songs than riff by riff this time - a bit more to the core, simpler, yet bigger. Half of the lyrics came very late, but thoughts on hunger has been omnipresent in my life since always. As someone with an appetite, for both creation and destruction (and distraction). As a survivor. As a percieved piece of meat. I did not hold back in any of these lyrics, and resided in a lucid place writing them. Looking through them now they invoke many things, if you connect with them they will do the same in you! That way we will be linked in the true colours of magic that music creates.
All in all it’s a great rock album, anybody make those anymore???
So much goes into this music. Every drop of me, spilled. If you can taste even a tiny part of that on the other side, it will all be filled up again in no time. The arrow will meet its goal in divine trajectory.
Thank you to the team: Ricky at Rapid Eye & Swamp, Wade Black, Marco Portello & Giorgio Salmoiraghi at Swamp Booking, Svart Records, Torben Utecht, Benjamin Greenberg, Dirk at Studio X, .saff, Jan Groppel, Lars Zander, Fabien De Menou, Victor Puigcerver, Affe Piran, Ryan & Overrun Booking, Tekla Valy, Inna, John Finne, Sarah Ben Hardouze, Dave US / THEM group, Daniel CZ, James Sherry/Division, friends and family in Berlin & beyond. A special thanks to Mat McNerney for the active support over the years and for being a liaison in this process.
And to everyone of you who care enough to listen, it is never taken for granted.
On the axis of desire/desperation, “HUNGER” is dedicated to bingers, purgers, night nurses, ashtray boys & moonshine girls, arrows, bows & bullseyes. Eyes on the prize, one meal at a time. Stay hungry ### Linnéa
