British indie-pop trailblazers The Kooks announce their sixth studio album, ‘10 TRACKS TO ECHO IN THE DARK’, which will be released via Lonely Cat / AWAL Recordings and is a fresh sounding, electronic-tinged evolution of their iconic sound.
After a worldwide arena tour, the release of their 2018 UK Top Ten album ‘Let’s Go Sunshine’ saw the band topping the bill at festivals across Europe and at home. Coming off the back of a punishing tour schedule, frontman, Luke Pritchard vowed to take a bit of a breather. But instead, found himself right back in the studio.
“I started going to Berlin for three or four days at a time. I was really affected by Brexit and I wanted to make a bit of a statement by creating a European record,” he explains. “We’re a European band, we practically lived out there and have so much love for Europe, so we wanted to keep that connection.”
Berlin has long been something of a creative Mecca for artists from all over the world and Pritchard found himself moving in those circles, meeting the collaborators he would work with on their behemoth of a sixth album, ‘10 TRACKS TO ECHO IN THE DARK’. The period was one of work, inspiration and creativity as opposed to partying. “I wasn’t doing any drugs,” Pritchard attests. “It was more dive bars and a bottle of whiskey than Berghain.”
The environment quickly started to work its magic. “A lot of songwriters have found refuge in Berlin”, he says. “It’s a free place, it’s not so consumed by commerciality. I was looking for something a bit rawer, a little bit more minimal. Sometimes you just pick up these nuances somewhere. It’s not necessarily the people, it’s the place.”
Luke concludes, “In the pandemic I had a good amount of time to look over our albums and feel proper proud and lucky. This album is a real thank you to our fans for sticking by us for so long, we hope you love it”
