There’s an ever-present longing for something new. The next song, the next story, the next quest. “If I knew where I was going I wouldn’t be on board,” Djurre de Haan sings on the new AWKWARD i album Unalaska. A word that, when he happened upon it in an old travel diary, called out to him like a light in the distance: Unalaska, Alaska. Coordinates on a yellowed page. Words that, on the one hand, refer to an improbable place on a map, but at the same time seem to contradict and confirm each other. To De Haan, it had a magnetic pull—an ambiguous enigma that beckoned to him. The start of an inward expedition, with the pace of a horse-riding protagonist.
“So I rode into town, at the speed of a horse, chewing on dead bird metaphors,” De Haan sings on the both infectious and puzzling Body As A Meadow. It could refer to the organic way in which he waited for the right words and notes to come to him—although every creator will tell you that it’s more a matter of actively waiting than passively sitting back. In between the numerous commissioned compositions De Haan arranged for film and theatre productions, he admits to always having had his eyes set on a new album, a place just outside his field of vision.