Rats on Rafts return with new single Hibernation

Rats on Rafts return with brand new music since 2021’s acclaimed album Excerpts From Chapter 3: The Mind Runs A Net Of Rabbit Paths. Currently preparing for the release of their fourth album set for release in 2025. Rats on Rafts’ new single was recorded in their own studio in Rotterdam and will be released via Fire Records. They recorded most of it themselves with help from Niek van den Driesschen in the first recording session, then Rats on Rafts also mixed everything themselves from tape to tape and mastered from tape to tape also with Niek. Hibernation is out now.

Hibernation is a rain-soaked lament to nature’s battered mortality, a monochrome snapshot of the landscape played out in beautiful cold wave delay. A lot of things come together on Hibernation, their love of reggae/dub, but also the dark wave/post-punk sound that really influenced the band when they were young. Frontman David Fagan explains: “Lyrically the song wrote itself, sometimes there are really tough periods you have to go through and usually it's a matter of time, but the deeper you get into this the harder it is sometimes to realise it's just a period. Experience shows that this feels different when you're younger that's why I think this I could never have come up with this when I was 20,” he continues. “I noticed that I could feel really comfortable with songs that can feel really heavy and isolated,” says Fagan “ If you listen to a Joy Division record for example, for a lot of people they’re really downcast. But for some people it’s like stepping into a really warm bath, because you can really identify with that music. I think that’s also what’s going on with Hibernation. I could identify with the coldness of the atmosphere, and that languid feeling of that song.”

You might say Rotterdam’s Rats on Rafts relationship with the past is complicated. Especially as a band never too keen on looking back. The revered punk rock experimentalists still remain highly unconcerned being called the harbingers of the quote-unquote Dutch Invasion – an increasing number of refractory bands from The Netherlands making noise overseas.

The Rats’ proclivity for things eroded by the decay of time has remained a constant in their rigorous hands-on ethos. The Moon Is Big (2011) Tape Hiss (2015) and Excerpts From Chapter 3: The Mind Runs A Net Of Rabbit Paths (2021) are truly gripping timestamps of a band refusing to give in to the supposed ‘progress of the world’ – first as hungry punk rock upstarts, then as fiery analogue recording dogmatists, and psych-rock protagonists. Instead of moving along with these volatile currents, Rats on Rafts stubbornly stand their ground in the subterranean hollows where their creativity always seems to thrive.

In February the band will tour throuhought the UK, and in March they’ll come back for shows in The Netherlands:

• 07 March: Rotown, Rotterdam
• 14 March: Vera, Groningen
• 15 March: Merlyn, Nijmegen
• 27 March: Stroomhuis, Eindhoven
• 28 March: Ekko, Utrecht
• 29 March: Melkweg, Amsterdam

Listen to Hibernation here!