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“I think this is the best thing we’ve ever done,” says bdrmm’s Ryan Smith. “It’s a proper step up.” It’s immediately clear that the Hull band – also made up of Joe Vickers, Jordan Smith and Conor Murray – have broken new ground on their latest album, which is, as Ryan correctly points out, the band’s most fully realised, complete, and greatest work to date. “The last album was essentially like a bridge between the two albums,” explains Joe, of 2023’s I Don’t Know.
“With that one we knew what we were trying to do but with this one we’ve fully cracked it.” It’s unquestionably a bold leap forward for the group, who have embraced a fuller spectrum of sounds, tones and atmospheres. “I felt very constrained writing a certain type of music to fit the genre [we were known for] but something lifted and I felt freer to create what I want,” says Ryan. “And what I seem to be doing at the moment is a lot of electronic music – taking influence from different spans of electronica, from dance music to ambient and experimental stuff.”
bdrmm’s trademark sound hasn’t completely disappeared by any means, you’ll still find beautifully layered guitars interlocking seamlessly with purring bass and crashing drums to create engulfing waves, but they are now integrated into a broader, more expansive and varied sonic palette. Just take ‘Infinity Peaking’ for example, a stirring piece of music that gracefully runs the gamut from post-rock meets shoegaze into a beautifully serene yet hypnotic synth-washed groove. “You can really see the holistic process of using guitars and synths together to create this new sound,” Jordan says of this song.