After a seemingly-standalone single "Nightingale" earlier this year, Haken is now streaming "The Alphabet Of Me" alongside the announcement of their new record Fauna due out March 3. On the concept of the record, vocalist Ross Jennings offered the following:
"The premise of the album when we started writing it was that every song would have an animal assigned to it. They all have something related to the animal kingdom that we could write about, but they also connect to the human world. Each track has layers, and some of them are more obvious than others.
"It reminds me of The Mountain," added guitarist and fellow founder Richard Henshall. "There, we had the idea of not really a narrative-based album, but more the concept of climbing a mountain and overcoming the obstacles along the way. Then we took that and thought about how it could relate to our everyday lives. All of Fauna's animals relate to us, personally."
Fauna also marks the return of keyboard player Peter Jones, and features artwork from Dan Goldsworthy (Charlie Griffiths, Sylosis). "What Pete's brought sonically to the band has played a massive role in why we do have a lot of new sounds on this record," said Ross. "It's always a new dynamic when there's a change in personnel, and this is a fresh and reviving one. It's certainly helped proximity-wise, with Pete being in the country: Pete and Ray [Hearne, Haken's drummer] would be at Rich's place and they'd just start jamming. That's really key to how the songs start."
