Track By Tracks: Abstrakt Lake - Moments // Elements (2026)

1. St. Georges' Fire:

It was one of the first tracks written for this album. As always, field recordings (i.e., recording outside the controlled environment of a studio) were the basis of the music. In this one, you can hear a fire in a chimney and bangs on the firescreen – all heavily processed. They became the main loops of the track. Almost all the other percussion and melodic sounds were recorded in an old Angevin manor in St-Georges-sur-Loire, France: steps in corridors, light switch, piano, door bells... The music was then embellished in the studio with vintage keyboards and various percussion.

2. Unquiet Drops:

This one mainly comes from droplets hitting various surfaces: a road, a gutter, maybe a sewer if I recall correctly! This is a very percussive track, but it also includes an aggressive synth melody, created from droplets' sounds as well. The title is obviously a nod to 'Quiet Drops' by Goblin, especially its cover by Swedish dark prog band Morte Macabre, one of my favourite bands. Even though Abstrakt Lake's music has almost nothing in common with this style!

3. The Greenway:

This is a very peaceful track, recorded in Normandy, in the French countryside. The marimba arpeggios come from wooden stakes on the edge of a forest path, and the other sounds (pads, synth, various percussion, and atmospheres) come from the same forest. The track kind of echoes 'The Old Boilery', from AL's previous album 'Meanderings', as it was recorded in pretty much the same area. But as the 'Boilery' track was all rusty metal, the 'Greenway' one is all woods, wind, and water.

4. Garden of Sculptures:

Ah, this number is the closest thing you can have to dark ambient in this album. The 'Garden of Sculptures' is an odd but beautiful place in Chessy, France. It was designed and created by Jacques Servières, and has a lot of statues erected at different times, some of them being 4 meters high. Quite impressive! The garden has some Asian vibes, coming from the fact that Servières was influenced by Cambodian art for a while. That's why I tried to include some discreet nods to Asian music, like gong sounds and exotic scales, for instance. The track mixes field recordings (like tympani sounds created out of a metal bridge) and vintage 70's/80's synths, in order to give the impression of an old, moody, sci-fi film.

5. Little Letoon:

The most 'classic' AL track on the album, if I may say so. A very peaceful, downtempo and organic piece, coming from field recordings made at the edge of a lake – including obviously water, but also frogs singing! It was the single from the album, in the vein of 'The Pond Below' (2024) and 'Psittacalling' (2025). My friend Artem Litovchenko (Thy Catafalque, Bruno Karnel...) guests on the cello here, with his subtle, very emotional style. I don't know if he would agree, but I think there is something of a Slavic melancholy in his playing that fits AL's music quite well.

6. Riggings:

This one reflects my taste for Brutal pop, or even Dark disco – coming especially from Belarus, with the likes of Dlina Volny or Molchat Doma. The main loop was created from boats' riggings in the port of Tromsø, Norway. This kind of recording is not easy to make, because of the wind... and you need wind to have sound, haha. But somehow I managed to get something cool, and it became this track. The weird, muddy sequencer parts come from an electronic effect I like a lot, created by Dave Hilowitz from Decent Sampler. I use his devices pretty much all the time. The guy is a genius if you ask me.

7. Vann og Is:

This is the second 'Norwegian' track of the album, recorded in Tromsø as well. But it's very different from 'Riggings'. It's an epic, very progressive track, with different parts. If you're into progressive rock, this one should speak to you. The main pads and synth come from water and forest atmospheres (the title means 'Water and Ice', in Norwegian), and the percussion sounds were created from field recordings made on a ferry, on our way to a fjord. The hi-hats are... reindeer hooves, which were obviously fun to make!

8. Zone 112:

As far as I remember, the oldest track on the album was already meant to feature on the first AL album in 2024. But then I felt it had to be reworked a bit – which I did later. The percussion and atmospheres mainly come from children leaving their classroom at the end of the day. I thought it would be nice to end the album with a short, simple track like that, after all these weird sounds and odd atmospheres!

To finish, I would like to take my hat off to Vadik Squarez (from Riga-nased pop metal Band All The Devils), who mixed and mastered this album, like the two previous ones. He did an amazing job, as always. In a large part, the album sounds great thanks to him!

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