Dear Troublemakers,
Sending you all love from cold and snowy Berlin. We are approaching the end of 2025 and now only have a handful of performances left before we turn our attention to 2026 completely. The past weeks have been intense. Our last post here was a few weeks ago, sharing the rehearsal we had with Reinaldo Verde in our studio to prepare for the “Prologue” of our future show in Ladesbuehnen Sachsen.
This show was a resounding success. While certainly not a final shiny, finished product, it was a confirmation that if we get it right, we could produce something truly special. What became clear was that the past years of experience have groomed us to produce such a show. Since 2022, we have been performing with the Kiezpoeten in Berlin. Different events at theaters around the city where we would often improvise tunes as the “Soundtrack” for different poems. We would know very little about the poem prior to the Writer taking the stage, and would need to improvise based on what we were hearing. We also worked with a lot of different dancers the past years, particularly with The Saxonz. Much of those performances were improvised in part, or written to a specific theme. These experiences are what opened our eyes to the possibility of creating a more immersive and narrative driven show.
After the performance in Landesbuehne, there were a handful of people who had never seen us perform before who gave us some brilliant feedback. The common thread I heard was “It’s like a fairytale for adults”. The story has been written with certain details intentionally vague, allowing the listener and reader to plug in the gaps with their own imagination. It has also been my intention with the Novella (it stands right now at 125 pages). My personal desire here is to remind our audience that they should use their own imagination and not rely on AI tools. I believe that creativity stems from our ability to draw on our experiences to plug knowledge gaps. It’s what makes each individual artist’s creation Unique. Every individual has a unique experience, and how they would choose to bridge a creative gap will stem from their own experience. It’s for this reason that there are finite details and sequences that are left intentionally vague (also in the animations), so that the audience might be able to have a unique experience of their own. The show is not intended to be “a film”, but rather a fully immersive concert where the audience feels included, yet also understands that there is a deeper message in the music. Last week we only scratched the surface of this, but the vision is clear.
So where does that leave us now? There is a lot of movement behind the scenes at this moment. We are ending this year with some really massive decisions to make going into 2026. One of the biggest is what to do about the position of Drummer in the band. It’s no secret to anyone that it has been a revolving door the past years ever since January 2023 when we parted ways with Olly. Since then we have had 6 different drummers play shows with us – all of them brilliant! As a team, we agreed at the start of 2025 that we wanted to end the year with a much clearer picture on who would be the more “full-time” drummer for our band into 2026 and beyond, and we feel now that we have some really good options. It’s important that as we build this show and record the next album (the one we expect to be our most consequential!) that we are hoping to do this with a more “fixed” member of the team. It is likely that we will have some news on that front in the next month!
And speaking of, that is also the next big update. Album. I’ve just about finished the first draft of the Novella, which will go off to editing. In the meantime, we are starting to prepare the early stages of the next album cycle. Lose Your Ties was recorded at a big studio in Berlin with a producer and with a lot of external people involved. Liberty Awaits was done entirely by us – Produced, Recorded and Mixed by me (Bennet). This time we are looking for a more Hybrid situation of the two. Having a neutral producer who will help guide the sessions and get the right “sound” we are looking for. The vision from start to finish of the record and how it fits into the narrative of our show and story is clear. All of these pieces fit together like a big puzzle that will paint a very ambitious picture. It’s a big step in our desire to develop further as artists and story-tellers.
I'm quite excited to share with you the future of where things are going! Once the first dominos start to fall, it will cascade rather quickly and we will have a lot to share with you.
With Love and Troubled Melodies,
Bennet
