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Aug 27, 2015 By Christopher Roberts Death Cab for Cutie

When Death Cab for Cutie founding member/guitarist/producer Chris Walla left the band last year after 17 years he didn’t publically give much of a reason why. Maybe that will change now that he’s releasing a new solo album and will start granting interviews about it. Tape Loops is due out October 16 via Trans Records. The five-song album is meant to be listened to as one piece and features no vocals. Below you can stream one of the five songs, opening track “Kanta’s Theme,” via Interview Magazine, who premiered it. His last solo album was 2008’s Field Manual.

Interview also posted a joint interview between Walla and Tegan and Sara’s Sara Quin (Walla has produced the band before). In it, Walla reveals that he’s moved to Norway with his wife Dianna Walla, started working on Tape Loops while also working on Death Cab for Cutie’s most recent album Kintsugi (the first Death Cab album not produced by Walla), and that the album is partly influenced by Brian Eno’s Music for Airports.

In the interview Walla talks a bit about leaving Death Cab and how it also corresponded with Tape Loops. “After three weeks of being in the producer seat for the Death Cab for Cutie album number eight, I decided that I shouldn’t be producing that record. Right at that moment, I started working on Tape Loops,” Walla says. “[Kintsugi] was the first record I made with that band that I hadn’t produced and that was a huge shift in my identity. It was long before I decided I was going to leave the band, but it was at this moment where I was feeling like the record wasn’t sticking and the ideas weren’t totally blooming like they should. At that moment, it wasn’t very satisfying. It was a big decision that I didn’t want that job. I sort of felt like, ‘Shit, if I’m not doing this then what will I do? What do I do? Who am I? What if I do something creative that’s satisfying? What is it? What comes out of me?’ I started plugging in tape machines and fiddling around with razor blades, slicing tapes, and I started making loops. When I came to the studio in the morning, instead of putting on a record to listen to when I was returning emails, I would just make a loop. Some of them were terrible-they made me angry and I took them off-but then a couple of them felt really nice and continued to feel nice after they were on for 20 minutes, or after an hour, or after couple hours. I started dumping those onto the multi-track deck and embellishing them. The fun thing was snapping into and out of a pointed, direct consciousness when I was working on it.”

Later on in the interview Walla comments on his current relationship with the rest of Death Cab for Cutie, saying: “Those guys, they are my brothers. We haven’t spoken a lot, but it doesn’t change the fact that I love them dearly and I hope it all continues to go well. I hope that those relationships can be new again someday, and strong again, in a way that is probably very different from how they were, but not fraught.”

Check out “Kanta’s Theme” below, followed by the album’s tracklist and cover artwork.

Tape Loops Tracklist:

1. Kanta’s Theme
2. Introductions
3. I Believe In The Night
4. Goodbye
5. Flytoget