Soon after the release of The Mountain in 2013, and spotting them at the Progressive Nation at Sea cruise in 2014, Haken became one of my new favorite progressive rock bands.  The British quintet, through Inside Out Music, is about to release their fourth album Affinity on April 29.  I had the pleasure of speaking to Vocalist Ross Jennings a few weeks ago about the new Haken album, their upcoming tour, and what we can expect from Haken in the future.

PROGARCHY   Hey, Ross. Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you!

RJ   Oh haha, I’ll tell you that’s more aimed at Ray, he’s the Irish one in the band.

PROGARCHY   Oh ok, so you’re not doing anything to celebrate?

RJ   I’m currently not, but maybe later, we’ll see.

PROGARCHY   Congratulations on the new album. It sounds really good.

RJ   Thanks! It came out better than we hoped.

PROGARCHY   It’s a little bit of a departure from your past albums, which I really like.

RJ   Yeah, we didn’t want to make the same record again.  On our last record, we tipped our hat to the 70’s- gave it a Gentle Giant approach. This time we decided to go the next decade along. At least to just try it. There are no restrictions, there’s no label telling us what to do.  As creative people, we didn’t want to rest on our laurels and repeat the same thing.  We just wanted to throw a few left hands in there and try something completely new and see where it took us.

PROGARCHY   I understand that in the past it was Richard who mostly come up with initial song concepts, on which the rest of you guys added your flair, but for the new album it was more of a collaborate effort?

RJ   Yeah, in the beginning, we all decided we’d start individually come up with our own pieces and then share them with each other, filter out the best ideas and then put them together in some sort of- it was sort of a jigsaw puzzle- picking the best moments from Ray’s piece, and let’s use Diego’s bit in there, and let’s put that together there- that sounds great.-  Yeah, so that’s kind of how it worked this time.

PROGARCHY   What was it like to change the way you do things?

RJ   It certainty worked better this way I think, because what it showed in the end product was how much variety there is. Each track is very different and that was directly because of that process.

PROGARCHY   Do you have a favorite track on the album?

RJ   From the initial demos, “1985” was always my favorite.  I just love it.  But my favorite performance is “Bound by Gravity”.  For me, it’s a beautiful piece and I felt I did it justice personally.

PROGARCHY   “1985” is my favorite track.  I’m a child of the eighties.  There’s this one part in “1985” that reminds me of a 80’s TV show theme like Beverly Hills 90210 or something.  That guitar solo has that perfect tone.

RJ   Yeah, it’s the ultimate 1980’s stereo type.  That was totally deliberate.  It was slightly influenced by Vince DeCola, he was responsible for the Rocky 4 soundtrack and Transformers. So that’s where all those sounds sorta stem from.

PROGARCHY   It had a little bit of Mike Post as well.

RJ   Well we all grew up in the eighties so I guess we have that connection with film and music culture.

PROGARCHY   I noticed you guys have been going “retro” lately. Like in the “Cockroach King” Video.. having the VHS-like beginning and Muppet-esque puppets throwing it back to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” video.  The Restoration EP was retro-Haken, with you guys re-working songs from your 2007 demo. And now with the promotion of Affinity you had a really neat throwback to 1980 computers on your website.  And of course part of the album had vintage synth, guitar, and rhythm lines. Also in your new track, “The Architect”, you also have a section of screamo, which harkens back to Haken’s early days.

RJ   I guess there’s a theme developing there, huh? Perhaps we should do something original next time (laughs). Well, I guess it’s a fine line- that could come across the wrong way, but I don’t think it does this time. And the way I see it, it’s a statement to prog music.  A lot of people say that prog died in the Eighties, but I personally think a lot of the bands made their best work in the Eighties.  That’s obviously subjective, but there was a lot of great stuff from bands like Rush, Yes, and Genesis, came from that era.  We just wanted to make that statement- Prog didn’t die. It was just different.

PROGARCHY   Your website is really cool, by the way. Who designed it?

RJ   Our web designer in Holland, Jeroen, but also Charlie helped come up with the concept. So a team effort between the band and people who know what they’re doing. (laughs)

(Check it out their new website: http://hakenmusic.com/haken-album-four-press-release)

PROGARCHY   I love how you have that cassette tape in the teaser.

RJ   Yeah, all of the PR is just drawing on that 80’s stuff. I feel like there is a lot of modern sounding stuff on this record as well, but as a novelty it was a good route to go down.

PROGARCHY   I heard cassette tapes are coming back. You know Eminem announced that he’ll be releasing his “Slim Shady LP” on cassette. So I think that Affinity should be released on cassette, maybe?

RJ   (With no hesitation) Yeah, well, we’re looking into it.  Actually we’re thinking floppy disc.

PROGARCHY   Is Affinity considered a concept album?

RJ   Not strictly, no. There are themes that reoccur.  There are references to technology, evolution, and human connection. It gets quite deep, but there is no narrative.  It’s really just a soundtrack to a set of themes.

PROGARCHY   I’ve only listened to it a couple of times, (now probably over 15) but I’m trying to follow the lyrics the best I can and see what the stories are.

RJ   Sure, well we got in our minds what it all means.  But I always find it’s best for the listener to take his own meaning from it.

PROGARCHY   Well, that’s one of the great things about your albums.  There’s so much going on- musically, lyrically.  So they leave room for multiple listens.

RJ   It’s always intended that way. You don’t want to overload people, but we like to have enough detail in there that it has a lasting effect, and that you can return to it and find something new each time. Even myself, I find new meanings for my own lyrics.

Check out Haken’s official video for “Initiate”:

PROGARCHY   Haken’s going on tour for a month a half, in Europe. Your first show is in Bristol, May 25th?

RJ   Yes, we’ll be covering a lot of Europe, plus we’ll be going to Israel for the first time as well.  Also it’ll be our first headlining show up in Scandinavia.  And then good news for you guys- we’ll be coming over in September to do some U.S dates.

PROGARCHY   Fantastic! That was actually the answer to my next question.

RJ   We’re still finalizing the details, so I don’t really have an official statement.  But it’s looking good that we’ll get out there for 3-4 weeks.

PROGARCHY   What do you like most about touring and what do you like the least?

RJ   I love it all!  I can think of a million things that are worse.  I used to have a day job as a photographer, which is still quite cool, but it’s not the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. I just love traveling and performing to people and seeing their enjoyment.  That’s a big rush for me. When they’re singing back your lyrics… yeah… it’s a good life.

PROGARCHY   What are you looking forward to on this particular tour?

RJ   Certainly to play the new songs- to see how we developed and what the audience is like now, compared to two years ago when we did our last headline tour in Europe.  To see old faces and just to get back out there!

PROGARCHY   Are you playing songs from different albums or a lot from the new one?

RJ   We’re talking about this at the moment.  We want to play all the new tracks, but whether we play it all in one go or spread them out, we haven’t decided yet.  But there are cities we haven’t played before, so it’ll be a good idea to have a broad set of songs from all the albums in the setlist.  We might have to dig up some old treasures.  But the important thing is to promote the new record.  And we’re so happy with all the tracks, we just want to play ’em all.  We’ll see how it goes in rehearsal, I guess. (laughs)

PROGARCHY   What do you like to do outside of music? You said you’re a photographer.. what else do you like to do?

RJ   That pretty much consumes my life at the moment.  I’m a sporty person.  I like to hit the gym a lot. I’m creative in general, so I used to do a lot of painting and stuff. But music and photography has always been my two focuses.

PROGARCHY   Well you’re doing really well, as far as music is concerned.

RJ   I think it’s been a nice steady upward slope.  I’m really happy with where we are at the moment.  I just hope this new record is received as well as we hope it will be.  So far, the feedback’s been positive, but some people might not dig the Eighties stuff. We’ll see.

PROGARCHY   Well, I think it’s a really cool album. I think people are gonna dig it.

RJ   I like to think of it as a breath of fresh air. Not entirely what you’d expect.

PROGARCHY   You guys are pretty quick to come out with albums. A lot of bands these days come out with albums every 3-4 years. You guys seem to come out with a release every year or two. How are you able to get these albums out so quickly?

RJ   I have no idea, we actually thought we were taking too long with this one. We initially had it planned to come out in 2015, but it took a lot longer to find the finished form. But we don’t want to be dwelling on things for too long.  We want to come out with a new album every two years if possible.

PROGARCHY   The round logo on the cover of the album reminds me of Sierra On-Line games, remember those? And it’s also interesting to note that the Sierra On-Line logo had a mountain in it.

RJ   Oh (laughs), I didn’t know that. Yeah, we wanted something that had a NASA-like logo as well, something with a sci-fi edge and with Eighties computing.

PROGARCHY   What’s the next step for Haken?

RJ   We just take things as they come I guess.  We want to get a live album out there or a video of us playing live.  We have our 10th anniversary coming up, so maybe we’ll do something for that.  But we haven’t had a meeting to talk about what we’d like to be doing in 3-4 years time.  So that needs to be done.

PROGARCHY   Ah, so THAT’S the next step basically (laughs).

RJ   Yeah, we want to see how well this record does.  Obviously we want to progress and tour a lot more and just become a bigger household name in the genre.

PROGARCHY   I’ve got one last question for ya, I heard that some of the guys in Haken like to knit, is that true?

RJ   To knit? (laughs) I’ve never heard that one before.

PROGARCHY   (laughs) I read it in an interview. I guess Haken means “to knit” in some language. In Dutch or something?

RJ   Ah, I see where you’re coming from. Yeah,  in Dutch, I guess “haken” means to crochet. We were thinking about doing a joke press photo of us all knitting, but that would’ve been lost on a lot of people I think.

PROGARCHY   Anything you’d like to add for the Progarchy readers?

RJ   I just hope they all enjoy it and come see us live because these songs take on another level when you hear them live, I’m sure. We’d love to see people joining us out there on the road!

Haken’s new album Affinity has a release date of April 29.

Check out Haken’s new lyric video for “The Endless Knot”