Interpol frontman Paul Banks has confirmed that he is working on a new album with a band he has formed with Liars‘ Aaron Hemphill.
Banks, who in recent years has moved to Berlin, said in a new interview with The Berliner that he has been working on a record in the city for the past three years.
“I started a band in Berlin, which we would call Berlin Project, if that were possible. I’ve been working on that a lot, and it’s been a big part of my music journey in Berlin, and hopefully there’ll be a record out next year,” he said.
“We don’t have a label yet, but that’s been three years in the making. It’s with a friend of mine, Raife Burchell from London, who I met boxing and is often in Berlin, and with Aaron from Liars.”
He continued: “Aaron lives in Berlin, and I’ve known him since Liars toured with Interpol in 2004. That fucking dude is one of the coolest guys I’ve ever seen with a guitar, and he’s just a wonderful person. He’s actually helped me in some ways with how to live here and showed me some of the ropes of getting health insurance and stuff like that.”
His latest side project follows his previous work with New York-based supergroup Muzz featuring producer Josh Kaufman and The Walkmen‘s Matt Barrick, who released their debut album in 2020.
The Interpol frontman has also released two solo albums, one under his moniker Julian Plenti in 2009 and one under his own name entitled ‘Banks‘ in 2012.
Speaking to NME about Interpol’s latest record ‘This Mirror Weighs A Ton’, Banks recently shared that Berlin also had an impact on that record.
“A lot of this record we wrote when we were in New York, and then I do a lot of lyric-writing in Berlin; refining a lot of the nebulous ideas that we jammed,” he said.
“I always loved Berlin. In the early days of the band touring, I always felt like it was just one of the most fashionable cities, I felt like it had a Mad Max quality where the hipsters just seemed really edgy.
“Now I’m not really plugged in to that Berghain-y hipster aspect of it and where I live is more young families, but it still gives me that urban injection. It still feels like enough of a cultural hub that I get the inspiration of fashion and young people.”
NME awarded that record four stars and said: “Banks described ‘This Mirror Weighs A Ton’ to NME as a “no-skips” album. It definitely bears riding it through for the whole journey of Interpol’s sonic past, present and future laid out, marking their most unified yet experimental effort in years and arguably their most consistent and satisfying since ‘Antics’.”
